You crave certainty, yet that need is precisely what’s holding you back. This week, we talk about why building trust with a personal brand, going hyperlocal, and creating real-life experiences people want to talk about are the only left ways to thrive in the AI future that’s rapidly approaching.
Chapters
00:00 Certainty Quote
00:05 Engagement
00:28 Why We Disappeared
01:56 Plane Germs And Stress
02:49 Recovery And Reset
05:03 Certainty And Growth
05:31 Readwise And Procreate
06:29 Stepping Stones Mindset
08:59 Artists And AI Fear
14:50 Jobs Change Over Time
18:29 AI Tools And Small Teams
21:05 App Gold Rush Reality
22:36 AI Tools Need Skill
23:00 Why AI Editing Lags
24:26 Sora Shutdown Story
25:15 Claude Runs Your Mac
29:08 Entrepreneur Window Now
31:08 Personal Brand Survival
35:52 Hyperlocal Media Strategy
37:59 In Person Experiences Win
39:23 Miami Yogurt Viral Play
43:17 Wrap Up And Plug
Transcript
Jeff Sarris: The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.
Amara Andrew: Hey Explorers, welcome back to Youthful Not Famous, the show where we gather and share the secrets that give your business an unfair advantage. I’m Amara Andrew.
Jeff Sarris: I’m Jeff Sarris. Look at you with a last name now.
Amara Andrew: I know. I
Jeff Sarris: like it. Well,
Amara Andrew: I gotta gotta ride the wave ’cause I only have a short amount of time with my last name.
Jeff Sarris: Why is that?
Amara Andrew: Because we got engaged. Ha
Jeff Sarris: ha ha. Yeah. One month ago. Today is our last podcast episode.
Amara Andrew: That’s
Jeff Sarris: crazy. So we’ve been away for a little bit. We’re gonna talk about certainty in a minute, but
Amara Andrew: I am certain why we were away.
Jeff Sarris: Why is that?
Amara Andrew: I was sick, which is crazy. Like, I literally have not gotten sick.
I think it’s been three or four years. It was my birthday last time. Uh, it was my 30th birthday. So yeah, it was three years ago. When I got sick last, I don’t get sick. We do not get sick. We’re not sick people.
Jeff Sarris: Well, yeah. And that was
Amara Andrew: sick bro.
Jeff Sarris: That was a time when I got sick first. Yeah. And then you wrote it out And then right when I was getting better.
You got it? Yeah. And got it. Just as hard as I did.
Amara Andrew: Oh yeah.
Jeff Sarris: Where this time around? I mean it’s been three weeks. You’re finally like you on week four.
Amara Andrew: I know,
Jeff Sarris: but I never got sick once.
Amara Andrew: Like my brain is still not all there. No, I know. Which is crazy. Like, it’s so weird how that works. I couldn’t imagine being sick all the time.
Like some people are, they’re just like, every time you see ’em or every other time, they’re just sick.
Jeff Sarris: Well, and I think the big thing too is you have immunity and you have stressors and stress can open up the door for something to come in.
Amara Andrew: Yes.
Jeff Sarris: When that happens, things change. So even when your immunity’s up, other things that aren’t in your control can.
End up leading to something that really just debilitates you, and I think because we don’t get sick when it gets in.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: Your body like doesn’t have as many reserves built up because you haven’t been fighting off as many different things.
Amara Andrew: Well, yeah. The thing was on our flight back, there were like a hundred people on our plane that were coughing the whole time and I was like, Ugh.
But I was like, think it was
Jeff Sarris: weird. I don’t know.
Amara Andrew: That never happened.
Jeff Sarris: They must have been, uh, connecting through Miami, I think.
Amara Andrew: So.
Jeff Sarris: They were not people who just love Miami?
Amara Andrew: No, they weren’t sunburned.
Jeff Sarris: It sounds so judgy.
Amara Andrew: Well, no, they weren’t sunburned and they weren’t tan, so
Jeff Sarris: they were just Well, it sounded like winter.
Amara Andrew: Yeah, it was. Quite gross. I don’t know why they would be connecting through Miami though. Well, whatever.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Coming
Amara Andrew: from
Jeff Sarris: anywhere. Um,
Amara Andrew: but, or if they were just there for like a conference or something and they didn’t get to step outside. But yeah, it was so weird. Like everybody was coughing and then the guy next to me was coughing and I was like, oh, well we should be fine.
Because like we always are like, we travel all the time. Um. Then, yeah, we get home and then I just die. But there was a big stressor, uh, when I got home. So that was, I think mostly what led into it
Jeff Sarris: anyway.
Amara Andrew: But
Jeff Sarris: anyway. But
Amara Andrew: I’m better.
Jeff Sarris: So we’re back. We’re back at it. We are, we have had a lot of stuff we’ve been talking about, especially this week.
Now that you’re thinking a little more,
Amara Andrew: why am I holding the mic like you?
Jeff Sarris: Because you, ’cause we’re one person.
Amara Andrew: Yes we are. And we shall be one more.
Jeff Sarris: Damn right. Um, sparkle. Sparkle. But. Um, yeah, lots of things that we’re talking about, like even so
Amara Andrew: many,
Jeff Sarris: because we need to get the show back, uh, on the, on the rails.
Going off for like a month isn’t, uh, what we wanna do here,
Amara Andrew: but, well, no. And so we were supposed to be back before, so what happened? Sorry, this is like, so boring probably, but I was sick for like a week, week and a half, like actually very sick. Then I got better and then my throat, I like couldn’t talk.
Jeff Sarris: You started to get better, but you.
You were, she was coughing nonstop. Like,
Amara Andrew: yeah, just like
Jeff Sarris: people on her plane. Old man who smokes a cigarette every day, a pack of cigarettes every day for 70 years, like. From your lung coughing.
Amara Andrew: That’s actually who I am. Uhhuh. So once you proposed, I was like, oh, I can just let down the heart. So I’m not actually a cute little 33-year-old.
I am an old man. A cute little old man.
Jeff Sarris: Damn right. But yeah, so like eventually I think what happened is your body was like, oh, finally. We don’t have to cough as much anymore. Okay. Now I need to heal all this damage. Yeah. And your throat, your tongue. Like, I got outta the shower the one day and you were just like, I, it’s hot.
And I was like, are you joking or are you serious? Because I was, I was afraid you were having like an anaphylactic.
Amara Andrew: Well, yeah. ’cause the back was all swollen. Yeah. It, it was the weirdest thing, like I couldn’t use the back of my mouth. So I was talking like this and then I woke, woke up.
Jeff Sarris: Only, only when you were trying to not feel the pain just for anyone listening.
Yeah, because it was very painful. It wasn’t. It was a moment where she talked that way and I was like, oh God, do we need to run to the hospital? But then you were just like, well, no, I’m fine. It’s just, it hurts. But
Amara Andrew: then my throat did swell the next day. It was like a whole fucking series of events anyway.
Yeah,
Jeff Sarris: we,
Amara Andrew: but for people that don’t get sick, it is quite alarming. ’cause it’s like, oh my God, we’re probably, everybody else just walks around feeling like that. But. It was very alarming. So anyway.
Jeff Sarris: Wait. It was a lot. But certainty. Yeah. So we’re certain that you were sick for a month. Um, the need for certainty is the greatest disease.
The mind faces, that’s from Robert Green. Yeah. And then the funny part is I also had this one. Marked down basically right next to it from the subtle art of not giving a fuck from Mark Manson. Certainty is the enemy of growth.
Amara Andrew: That’s so crazy. Just but they were like back to back basically.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Like I, they aren’t things I just read, but I’m always curating from the stuff that I’ve read before.
We use Read wise, if you wanna use Read Wise, you can find a code in the. Description of this that you’ll see our little face on it because they do have us a special code for our listeners. Hi. But um, it’s very cool because it surfaces all these quotes that you highlight from Butch that you read in the past.
Amara Andrew: It’s probably not, probably it is my favorite app besides Procreate.
Jeff Sarris: Mm-hmm.
Amara Andrew: Two favorites by far. Like so Cool.
Jeff Sarris: Procreate.
Amara Andrew: Yeah. The drawing
Jeff Sarris: Uhhuh
Amara Andrew: app,
Jeff Sarris: so that that’s up there as like your favorite app right now.
Amara Andrew: Not right now, but of all time. Okay. At one time it was by far my favorite app.
Jeff Sarris: Mm-hmm.
Amara Andrew: Now, obviously I don’t use it as much, but it was, it’s magic, like how it works, how you can use it, and I drew so many different things.
I launched, like we had our NFT projects and everything that I drew on there, so
Jeff Sarris: if you don’t, oh, amara andrew.com, you can see them.
Amara Andrew: Oh yeah. And then my Etsy sticker shop, like I did so many things in that, I don’t know, it was just, it was a new. Experience, I
Jeff Sarris: guess. So I think this actually sort of makes sense now.
So certainty. So
Amara Andrew: I’m not certain where you’re going.
Jeff Sarris: Well, you, you just said all the different things you’ve done that led
Amara Andrew: and those were just a couple things.
Jeff Sarris: Well, you’ve said a list of a bunch of different things you’ve done, and they all led here because they were stepping stones.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: You were certain that you would do them, meaning you just did them, but you weren’t.
Certain that they were gonna be the path and the only path, and I need to be drawing to make money, or I need to be selling stickers on Etsy to make money. I need the certainty of one thing.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: And like certainty is the enemy of growth. The need for certainty is the greatest disease. The mind faces, if you were certain that this is it, I, there’s no other choice.
The only thing I can do is use pro trade and draw, and I have to make money doing that. Mm-hmm. Like you, you could have. But you also could have missed all of the other opportunity with one stone away on your stepping stone journey to see like, oh, what will get me further and where I wanna be.
Amara Andrew: It also feels so self-defeating and self-limiting where like thinking in a creative discipline specifically, you’re supposed to be creative, but then you’re not being creative.
It’s like, uh. See my brain’s still not up to speed, uhhuh, but you’re, you’re limiting yourself on what you can actually do. Where it’s like, no, I could use procreate, I could use yo-yos, like I can do anything I want to make whatever this art piece is. But then if you’re like, well, no, I have to do it in procreate because X, Y, and Z.
What if it looks better as a painting or as a shoebox or like whatever,
Jeff Sarris: or I have to use a pencil and paper because yeah, digital isn’t real, so, or I have to use digital. Um, with my hand because AI isn’t real.
Amara Andrew: That’s exactly who I was as an artist before, was you could only do it with your hands if you did it digitally.
You were a graphic designer and you’re not a real artist, which I know sounds crazy now especially, and especially talking to you. But it was like, well, no, that’s not. Art, like it is an art form, but that’s not what art actually is. It was, no, you get dirty and you make this shit with your hands. Now, though, obviously that’s changed and that was why I had such an aversion to procreate in the beginning because, well, no, it’s digital art.
I’m not actually drawing it, but you are. It’s just a different format,
Jeff Sarris: and I think that also really just illuminates it a lot, so. You said an artist, you should be creative, you should be doing creative things. Like so many people who, people who identify as artist, like it’s a pronoun or whatever, but like
Amara Andrew: my pronoun is artist.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. People who identify as an artist, like self-proclaimed artist, I’ve found like we both have, but almost universally they are completely against ai. In every way. Like AI is the problem when they’re the problem because they’re not creative. They’re the least creative people anywhere. They can draw, they can whatever, but that’s not creative.
When I’ve gotten good at one thing, but like they’re like, I’m creative, I’m an artist. It’s like, well then use the tools and do something creative, but you’re so certain that I’m only an artist if I do this. That you’re not actually going to make it. So I said it illuminates things because when you were in that mindset before of like, it’s only an artist I do with my hands,
Amara Andrew: and that’s just me.
That doesn’t mean that’s all artists.
Jeff Sarris: I mean, but all my experience is very, uh, very skewed of the. The starving artist by choice, but they don’t know. They don’t feel like it’s by choice kind of thing. But just I wanna say just the illuminating thing is when you didn’t wanna use digital was when you weren’t able to make a thing out of it yet.
It wasn’t until you started using the other tools, your certainty, you pulled your certainty back and you did other things that then it opened up so much more opportunity to do anything.
Amara Andrew: I would only push back on that, that I had an objective when I was working with procreate. So like an NFTI couldn’t have a piece of paper like I could have, but that would’ve been so different from what it actually is.
’cause NFTs are digital art. In case you don’t know what an NFT is. Uh, well that is one type anyway. I’m not even gonna go down that rabbit hole. But the having digital art, I needed to get comfortable with making digital art. And even for Etsy, for my sticker shop. I wanted more crisp lines and I wanted a specific look, so I had to get more familiar with the digital, like it all coalesced at the same time, which was really interesting.
I would also,
Jeff Sarris: I just wanna say, but that’s because you’re creative. I want this to be that, and I can use this tool for this to be that.
Amara Andrew: So this is where I was gonna go too, is that I can see people having apprehensive apprehension going back to the certainty thing of. Well, shit, I’ve spent 700 years learning how to draw hyper realistic or very creative, my own style and now I’m gonna get rid of that because like they don’t have the certainty of will I actually be able to be an artist in the AI world?
’cause it’s such a different. It’s such a different type of creativity. There is creativity there. I will argue, especially the more that I’ve worked with it. Um, it’s just a very different type where I think doing traditional art, like you, you get the satisfaction of like working with your hands. Like there is something about it, like, oh my God, I made this bass, or it’s a jar, whatever.
But there’s something different about that versus. Well, I typed all these things on a keyboard and then it showed up. And not saying that that’s not art, because I would actually argue that that is an art form, but the type of, maybe the type of job that they’ve had is very different or completely obsolete now, like thinking about it, which is really scary.
If I had done what I was going to do, go to Manhattan, get my degree in illustration, I would be. Fucked. Now, like granted, I would always make whatever work, but it’s just such a different landscape. Like if I had sunk, it was a very expensive school and I still had a decent amount of scholarships for it, but who’s gonna be very expensive?
You have all that debt. So I can see sort of where that uncertainty and that apprehension comes from. But then it’s like, but what do you do? And not to only make it about artists, but,
Jeff Sarris: well, no, but you’re making the point uncertainty. Mm-hmm. That’s the whole point of this is you have to embrace the uncertainty.
Like the problem is not being creative, not thinking outside of like, well, no, it has to be certain, like I paid for this degree. Like I learned how to be a court stenographer. Like I learned, but you didn’t. I learned short here. I learned shorthand because yeah, to be a professional secretary. Oh, now they call it administrative assistant though.
Okay, so now I’m an administrative assistant and I can write in shorthand. But wait, there’s a computer. No, no, no, no, no. Like I paid for this. I learned how to write shorthand. We’re not using computers here. Like someone to say that would be absolutely bonkers today. But that’s the same thing, like shorthand.
If you don’t know what shorthand is, it is handwriting where you writing little lines and squiggles to write way faster than using actual English characters. And like my mom learned that that’s how she was like a secretary. She would use shorthand to do everything, like take meeting minutes and all these things before computers.
But if it was, then that
Amara Andrew: still breaks my brain how that works.
Jeff Sarris: Mm-hmm. Have you ever seen the stuff she’s written.
Amara Andrew: Not hers, but I’ve seen that written other places and I’m like, what in the hell is this? I feel like I’ve found like, like hieroglyphics
Jeff Sarris: or
Amara Andrew: something
Jeff Sarris: literal looks like horizontal squiggle circle.
Like it doesn’t look like anything, but it means something. It
Amara Andrew: looks like spaghetti. Like you just took a noodle and threw it at your fucking paper.
Jeff Sarris: But then that’s the thing. It is the uncertain, you have to embrace uncertainty. It can’t be, we can’t be certain that, okay, I spent. Let me just use the, this example as shorthand.
Let’s pretend I spent $10,000 to learn shorthand. Obviously this was like the seventies or whenever she learned it, so it was not that, but I spent $10,000 to do that. I’m, I’m certain this is the only thing I can do now forever. I mean, you’re outta luck. Like, I don’t know what to tell you. Like it’s, I was listening to a thing about, um.
Gig economy drivers. So like Uber and Lyft, who they’re fighting back against Waymo because Waymo is like robo taxis and they’re fighting saying you can’t do this. What do you do in all these jobs? Like we work for Uber and Lyft. Like that’s our job. How can you take away our jobs? But the one thing that like started got me listening to this podcast is no one said.
The job didn’t exist eight years ago, 12 years ago, whatever. Like literally, that’s a brand new job and new jobs always come, but our certainty is, no, I drive. This is what I do. This is what I do. This is what I do. Like, that’s just like you’re so certain, which then holds you back.
Amara Andrew: What else was it that we just saw?
It was like, well, my. It was some podcast or something, and I think we’re watching the video of it, but it was like, well, my mom was a, a reporter or a journalist, but those jobs don’t exist anymore. But now I had to be whatever, like, uh, I forget. I know
Jeff Sarris: exactly what it was. So everyone,
Amara Andrew: was it time of a CEO?
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. So it was, uh, Daniel Priestly, what’s his name? Something priestly.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: So he was talking about how, basically how everything changes.
Amara Andrew: See, he’s still not working.
Jeff Sarris: Everyone. When blogging and the internet started, they were just like, this is destroying the journalism. This is in destroying the industry of magazines and newspaper publication and journalists.
What happened was there were like a couple thousand journalists, what, however many journalists existed. Suddenly it wasn’t that nobody wrote anything anymore. It’s that instead of the few thousand journalists now there was 750,000 bloggers. So it just exponentially drew the number of journalists, except a journalist isn’t what people were stuck on like this.
This careers drawn away. This job is drawn away and people made more money doing that when they were creative and not stuck in like, what? What does it mean to be a blogger? Well, it’s not just. Talking about the food I’m eating right now. Like you can be a journalist, you can, people did and still make serious money doing that better than they ever would working for like News Corp or something.
We just watched the Rupert Murdoch uh, documentary, which is really interesting.
Amara Andrew: That’s so fascinating.
Jeff Sarris: But yeah,
Amara Andrew: and so that’s where. That’s kind of what I’m thinking about then is being an artist doesn’t go away. It’s just a very different type. So like there Exactly. There’s a lot of apprehend apprehension in like the movie industry right now about, well, shit, this person generated the clip of, what was it?
Brad Pit and Tom Cruise fighting on a rooftop. Yeah,
Jeff Sarris: there’s a lot of different ones.
Amara Andrew: Keanu reads. Yeah, that was like the first one though. That just went completely viral. Or maybe the Keanu one did, but it looks so good. It sounds just like them and it’s like. Okay, Hollywood’s done. But no, it’s not. It’s just everything is constantly shifting, and especially now with how rapidly technology can change.
It’s just you need to be, you need to be flexible, and you need to be malleable and be able to roll with the punches. Like even what we do with Maven, we fly all over the country. We film with people. That’s gonna change significantly.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Hyperlocal marketing.
Amara Andrew: Yeah. That’s gonna change significantly in this next six month window.
Um, because I just saw what you sent me on Twitter about cap cut or whatever. I fucking hate cap cut. But they have an, uh, like an auto editor essentially, which is what I’ve been talking about forever.
Jeff Sarris: So what I sent, if it’s the same one, it’s a studio where you can create an entire film. Scene by scene.
Yeah. Rearrange it. Do all these things using ai, which is wild
Amara Andrew: and it’ll edit it as well. They’re like specific editing directives I think. But then like something like Descrip, which is what I use for editing now, they are working very heavily on their AI beta to edit everything. So like, you don’t need to, you, I was gonna say, you’re, you don’t need to to pay people, but, and this isn’t self-preservation or anything, I really don’t care, but.
You still need someone. This is what we’ve talked about a lot like Jeff and I, you and I, uh, that you’ll still need somebody who knows what they’re doing to do the thing that, now, that doesn’t mean that you’re gonna need 10 people as part of your marketing team, or 20 or a hundred, or even five. You might just have one or two, and then they can do everything, which is already what we do.
But you can. Significantly reduce how many people are involved in the project or in the company or whatever it is. But you do still need the people who know exactly what they’re doing. So like with yeah,
Jeff Sarris: this taste
Amara Andrew: and everything
Jeff Sarris: too,
Amara Andrew: and just to make it so much more effective. So like you, for example, you have so much experience with coding, computers, all that fun, wonderful stuff.
So Claude Code now. Is like your perfect tool, but you, you need to know still what you’re doing and what you’re looking for. It’s like Sherlock Holmes. He solves the mysteries by looking for what’s not there. Uh, I think that was something in our daily law today actually, or maybe yesterday. Mm-hmm. But he only caught the, the suspect because the dog didn’t bark.
But nobody else would’ve noticed that. It’s looking for the thing that isn’t there and you know, to do that. Having worked with computers for 700 years.
Jeff Sarris: Well, and that’s, uh, the thing that’s sort of the running joke right now is everyone can now make software and make apps. So it we’re at a time where everyone has apps with zero users.
Like Yeah, that’s the, which is crazy. Like sort of that’s the rub is sure you can make an app. Is it something that has a market? Is it something that you found a product market fit? Is it something anyone needs? And can you reach the people who need it? All of those things, like the AI can make the app for you, but then there are so many other things like we talked about stepping stones, like making an app is only one of the stones.
Make an app and publish it and good luck. Like if you wanna try it, but then you still need to understand how to orchestrate. Everything. So the app store. Now, just for a quick, uh, a quick rundown. The, the Apple App Store, so like iPhones, it was a a couple week process because when you submit an app, someone reviews it.
Like they don’t just put all the apps up there. It’s not Android by Android’s. A little like kooky. Yeah, because you can get some really bad stuff on there, but iPhone is walled off. They made sure that stuff is up to par. It would be a couple weeks before you could get an app up there. Apparently they have so many submissions now that it is five or six months before an app will be approved.
Amara Andrew: Damn.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Because they’re getting tens of thousands of apps. ’cause anyone can do it.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: So like just because you can doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to do anything with that. So like that’s the thing is there’s lots of skills and knowledge and understanding that. Now I have so many more tools at my disposal to 10 x what I can do.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: But we talk about a lot. Most people are trying to one 10 x, so it’s like, okay, I don’t wanna do any work, make social media for me go like even how you said, like editing.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: That you started to say you won’t need an editor. But like, you know, the truth of it is that there is not a video. Editor AI that’s even remotely usable yet?
No. Like not even close. Like
Amara Andrew: there are only some where you can cut out the gaps and that’s basically
Jeff Sarris: it. Yeah. You can do very specific things. Yeah. And it’ll get better with time, but like you only,
Amara Andrew: we’re still a very long way out because there’s so much nuance and stuff.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah, and it’s.
Amara Andrew: It’s taste,
Jeff Sarris: it’s easier to generate new video than to edit.
With ai, yes, like you can generate anything you want, but then when you’re generating AI video, that’s again a different product. Anyone can do it. So then you’re, you have your product of your video with zero viewers. You have your app with zero users, like business is long. If you just type a thing, then put it out there for sale, you’re not getting anywhere.
But if you’re planning and trying to do something for the long term. You will as long as you stick to it and keep going and iterating. What,
Amara Andrew: sorry? I just remembered the cat video you showed me.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah,
Amara Andrew: I was listening to you, but you just said generate any video and it was so stupid, but it was adorable.
’cause we love cats.
Jeff Sarris: Oh yeah. It’s the best Sora video. So SOA was open AI’s video generator. But they know, are they? Yeah, they just shuttered. Like if, if you have any interest in staying up on ai. You can’t wait. No. Like you’re not, you’ll never get a book. You’ll never, it’s hard to even watch a YouTube video because
Amara Andrew: kind of, if you already haven’t been looking into it, you’re kind of almost too far gone at this point.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. You need to find your platforms where people are at the forefront of it. Like X is basically the main one where. Philanthropic who has clawed, they launched something almost every day and the running joke is they launch the most groundbreaking piece of technology the world has ever seen and just say, oh, we just did this because there’s so many, they, they probably launched three things this week, I think that are the nat.
It changes everything. Yeah. Like one thing real quick is cloud cowork can now run your entire Mac computer. Not Windows, not Linux.
Amara Andrew: An actual computer
Jeff Sarris: and those are actual, but like it can run your Mac computer, which means you can connect to your computer from your phone and type to it and have it do whatever you want.
Like, oh, I’m late for my meeting, will you, will you reformat all the images in my presentation? Shorten it to only 12 slides instead of 16, and like send it to my email. It’ll just go and click around your computer and do this thing. As an employee would. Even more than that is now. You can do anything.
Anything. You don’t need to have, it’s called an MCP. You don’t need an MCP connection for AI to connect into software. You don’t need any of this. It will go online, use your browser. Like if you watched the computer, you would see what it’s doing. It’s literally using your computer, which absolutely changes everything.
And that was an aside. They just said it like, oh, that’s out now. I
Amara Andrew: know. On like Tuesday at like 1:00 PM Yeah, they’re just like, whatever.
Jeff Sarris: That’s it. That’s out.
Amara Andrew: Uh. And then everyone on Twitter is like, what the fuck? Uhhuh?
Jeff Sarris: But, and they keep doing that because everything’s moving so fast. So if you want to.
Stay up to speed. You need to stay up to speed. You can’t wait like a YouTube video from last week is old now. Yeah. On AI because it’s changing so fast. So Sora, sorry. Open AI had Sora, the image generator. We used soa. We’re
Amara Andrew: very passionate about this, as you can
Jeff Sarris: tell. Ah, we used Sora as one of the generators for both of our AI films we made.
We made short animated films a year and a half ago, a year ago when it was very, very difficult to do.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: But we made them and we’re very proud of them. SOA was one of the generators that we used to generate individual clips, like two seconds at a time kind of thing. Um, well, they just shuttered SOA to focus elsewhere because basically SOA was early, but they didn’t have any sort of viable approach to all the costs on their end to do it.
So Grok has imagined and GR has just. Eaten all of the, like a bar Raf, you just see Sora shrinking and grok growing. So they’re already blowing through money, so they, they shut it down. So people are sharing the best Sora has ever made, and one of them is a cat on a porch. And it is so funny.
Amara Andrew: It’s so cute.
Jeff Sarris: Like, we have to play it. We can’t say it
Amara Andrew: well, so. Just as like an idea, it’s a cat. It starts where you think he’s playing a fiddle is the first one. He’s like just playing it on this porch and it looks like, it’s like a ring doorbell cam. And then this woman comes out of the door and she’s like, Hey, I told you to stop making noise.
Get off my porch. And it’s just so funny. And then it’s just a whole series of them where he is like bagpipes at one point.
Jeff Sarris: That’s really funny. And he is always facing the camera.
Amara Andrew: And then the woman just says different things. Anyway, so it’s just a,
Jeff Sarris: it is so funny
Amara Andrew: you showed it to me and I was like, oh my God.
Jeff Sarris: Uhhuh.
Amara Andrew: It was like the first day I could actually talk and I was like, ah.
Jeff Sarris: But yeah, so anyway, so Sora is noura and uh, um, there’s so many things to talk about with ai.
Amara Andrew: Oh yeah. And
Jeff Sarris: also
Amara Andrew: like, like literally every single day there’s something new, but it’s really not, but it’s really exciting. ’cause then it’s like, oh cool.
How can I use this new tool?
Jeff Sarris: Exactly.
Amara Andrew: Like even talking about Claude Cowork, I’m like, I can think of a hundred different things now where, so we’re, we’ve historically obviously been an entrepreneur way longer than me historically. We’ve just been literally just the two of us. And then your business partner Dave, doing everything.
That’s it. I keep saying it, and it’s truer and truer with every passing day. Especially now with all these new things that Claude’s just sprinkling into the fucking atmosphere. This is the perfect time. If you are a lone wolf entrepreneur that doesn’t wanna hire people, that doesn’t wanna have to deal with managing people and shit, this is the perfect time for you to exist and make your company exist.
Like if you haven’t do it now, my God, this is like the perfect
Jeff Sarris: time and your only shot. Like the guy from Shopify said 2026 is going to be looked at as the year that we look back and say, wow, everything was up for grabs.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: Anyone could have made anything and been a huge success, but that window closes closer and closer and closer every single day.
It’s like if you were interested in NFTs early and you bought. Crypto punch or bored apes, you made hundreds or mil hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: Or if you joined late, you lost all your money because you’re like, oh, this is a good investment. And then it went from 300,000 to 3000.
Yeah. And like this is that window. You have your window right now, and either you get on, get on board, or you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be trapped on the runway. Like someone said, there’s a storm coming in, you’re in a plane. If you get that plane up above the clouds, you’re gonna keep flying. If you don’t get off the runway before the storm comes in, your plane will be drowned maybe forever.
Amara Andrew: That stresses me out so much,
Jeff Sarris: but like we already have things in place. We’re already building things and we have platforms
Amara Andrew: having like basically a month down from being sick.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah, that’s brutal.
Amara Andrew: That has stressed me out so much, but I’m. I was trying to not let it, because I was like, the longer, if I stress out about this, I’m gonna be sick for six months instead of just a couple weeks.
But that has been weighing on me so much where I’m like, no, is the fucking charm. Do it. So, yeah, just if you’re, if you’re snoozing, you’re losing
Jeff Sarris: Well, yeah. It’s going to be a problem. Yeah. And not having any sort of platform too is gonna be a major problem because Yeah, we, right now we can turn to AI for anything.
I don’t need to go to Joe Schmoe’s website to figure something out. I asked like we use Grock for questions.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: Above everything. So I asked Grock every single little thing that I possibly need to know, like our furnace wasn’t kicking heat. So I’m asking a questions, I’m working with it, trying to figure it out.
You don’t need a person for that anymore, but. What happens when you already have a trusted person like using the furnace, for example?
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: And I’m like, this person has always been the person I turn to because they’re so helpful. I don’t have to worry about it. I can trust them. You go to that person, they have a personal brand, they have a thing.
So you trust them implicitly for various reasons that you have that no one else has.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: So a personal brand builds that trust amongst a bunch of people, and then that’s how people make money. You make money by being useful to people because they implicitly trust you to be useful to them in certain ways.
If no one yet trusts you to be useful to them, to give you money. The AI storm comes in, you’ve lost. There is no way to surpass the storm, and you’re going to have to completely reimagine what you’re doing with your life. Like it really, it just is.
Amara Andrew: No, I know. I’m laughing, but I’m like, yeah, that is very true.
Jeff Sarris: And like nobody, nobody sees it. Nobody sees it coming. Like, especially like, so people who are doing things, it’s like, it’s talked about, but the further and further back you get, like when you get to Norm Normies, they have no idea, is crazy. Like no idea that that they’re done.
Amara Andrew: Crazy. Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: Like if you’re not building something now you are done.
That’s it. Plain and simple.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: It’s crazy.
Amara Andrew: It is wild. Just thinking of the entire restructuring of everything basically. I know we’ve talked to a couple people in different areas who don’t think that they’re on the chopping block with ai, and it’s like, oh no, like you’re gone. Like maybe you’ll still be involved in a different capacity, but no.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah, everyone has to be a micro influencer, whether that is online. Or just in human life, like there’s 12 people that trust me to take care of their lawn, to like help them with things to, oh, I cook for the neighborhood. Like whatever it is, like micro.
Amara Andrew: Well that’s,
Jeff Sarris: that’s not a problem. Like that’s sort of how we work.
We, we exchange goods or value of some way, but if you don’t have that, which is hard, like our value is online, external. Locally now, because we’ve built our local platform, which isn’t like an accident, like because we need to prepare for everything, but like so many people just work a job and the job doesn’t care.
Like, it’s not like a morality thing because I’ve heard people talk about morality, having AI take jobs and stuff like that, and it’s like, well, no, it’s literal. Everyone needs to survive
Amara Andrew: dollars and cents.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Like a business who isn’t embracing AI is going to crumble and you won’t have a job anyway. So like they’ve already, they’ve already signed the sort of, uh, death certificate on your job.
If they’re not doing AI and if they wipe you out, it’s so they can survive.
Amara Andrew: This sounds shitty, but if you’re not valuable enough to your company, then if you haven’t proven that you’re valuable enough, then you’re sort of gone already. Or you had no point in being with that company or business or whatever.
Jeff Sarris: It’s all really, it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a whole new world. Yeah. But it’s also reverting back to basic, like early days. How did you like barter for goods? You had your cobbler, you had your, uh, steel worker. What is that?
Amara Andrew: Blacksmith?
Jeff Sarris: Blacksmith. You had like all these things. You had your farmer, you have.
Whatever else. Dot dot. Nope,
Amara Andrew: that was it.
Jeff Sarris: But
Amara Andrew: a shoe maker and a black.
Jeff Sarris: But getting back to those things, you know?
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: Like, not those specific jobs, but, but our, we work human to human,
Amara Andrew: our digital version of it. And that’s why like the things that we keep seeing over and over and over and over again and that we sort of have noticed is.
Personal brand is huge. So if you haven’t started on your social media, your personal brand or anything right now, you are very much in the, the home stretch. This is kind of it
Jeff Sarris: either online or in your community.
Amara Andrew: Yeah. So then that was gonna bring me to my next one. That’s right. Which is no, teed me up perfectly, which was doing hyperlocal.
That is something that few people have tapped into. But we’ve actually learned more and more people are in a variety of things. So like specifically for me, I think of video first, but newsletters, podcast, do the things hyper locally and become the face and the voice of your town, especially if you are a small business owner, real estate, whatever, like
Jeff Sarris: anything.
Job,
Amara Andrew: business owner or you want job. Yeah,
Jeff Sarris: like honestly
Amara Andrew: anything, like literally anything,
Jeff Sarris: you’re, if you’re the face of your town and you need a job. And you, if you post your videos, so like our platform, the Hyperlocal one, get two to five, 6,000 views every video.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: Of people who live in town, no one else.
We’re very, very explicit that we only reach people who are within like driving distance of the town. So what happens if you wanted to get a job? You’re just like, hey. I’m looking for a job. Everyone. I’m, I’m looking for this industry. Do you know anything I would’ve had? Imagine? Could you imagine job in like
Amara Andrew: an hour?
Imagine
Jeff Sarris: it’d take you 10 minutes. Yeah, you’d have 12 job offers because they know you. They liked you, they trust you. They’ve seen you every single day to implicitly trust you because they’re constantly listening to you. Because By choice, not by force,
Amara Andrew: and by focusing on value first, forever.
Jeff Sarris: Exactly.
Amara Andrew: So a lot of people, some people have done hyperlocal, but it’s very much not value first.
Like why would anybody care or anybody listen? That is the key. So personal brand, preferably hyperlocal if you can or if you like. I know it’s kind of daunting ’cause it’s like, well now my whole neighborhood and everybody in my town knows it doesn’t matter. Like that’s where you live. Well that’s also, that’s where you have the most capital
Jeff Sarris: also.
And that’s only talking online. ’cause again, it can be in just in person going to all the events and offering to help people when they need help.
Amara Andrew: Yeah. Which is also what we’ve done. Um, so those two things. And then forget what else. Oh, in-person experiences. That is gonna be. Something very unique in the AI age, I think as well, especially now.
Nobody wants to go out. Movie theaters are dying. Nobody even really wants to watch a movie as much anymore. Breaking
Jeff Sarris: news, movie theaters are dying. I
Amara Andrew: know. Well,
Jeff Sarris: I was, wait, let me check the newspaper real quick and see if it says it,
Amara Andrew: but I was listening to a, a different podcast the other day and they, one of the people was just talking about movie theaters and I was like, oh yeah, I forget about those.
But like, I, I love going to the movies, but we haven’t been to a movie in forever because. Honestly, I’d rather just be home. Um,
Jeff Sarris: which is everyone too, like shopping? No, I
Amara Andrew: know.
Jeff Sarris: Like you go to, you see how many stores are closing, how few people are ever in a store. Yeah. Because there’s no reason to,
Amara Andrew: I know Vance and Miami closed,
Jeff Sarris: but just Yeah.
Across the board,
Amara Andrew: making an experience so good and amazing that people wanna leave their home. And if you own a restaurant or a bar. How are like, yeah, takeout is gonna be really big, but if you can even get people in in person, you can have a higher ticket value or a higher bill. I’m talking like sales, but you can have a higher ticket per customer if you have people in there and they’re having a great time.
Because when you have a great time, you wanna spend more money, especially with alcohol and whatever else is involved
Jeff Sarris: and talk about it. So that’s the secret thing, is like, so in Miami there was this place with frozen yogurt. Oh, not the one we went to.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: The other one that is basically like, it sort of went viral on TikTok because they deliberately made an experience that people would talk about.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: So then every time you walk by, there was a snaking line, like ropes of. What’d you say? 20 to 40 people at any different time waiting. Oh, at least
Amara Andrew: 40 people.
Jeff Sarris: Like always waiting out there was a hundred percent of the time, which is
Amara Andrew: why we didn’t go. Yeah. Because I was like, I don’t wait in lines.
Jeff Sarris: Oh yeah.
We don’t. But always aligned. But then people do that because you’re, we just talked to someone locally about her, like local business. She’s started
Amara Andrew: mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: And it was giving or telling her, giving people. Content to make.
Amara Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Sarris: So like this frozen yogurt shop in Miami Beach, they’re giving people content to populate their feed.
It’s like, I just went to X, Y, Z frozen yogurt and look at this line. It’s crazy. Ah. Like everyone wants to post something.
Amara Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff Sarris: Whether or not they’re using it for any value to like,
Amara Andrew: and
Jeff Sarris: get fame or try to make money, like that’s a different story. But it doesn’t, that’s not your. Job. Your job isn’t to be like, this is a way you can leverage it to build your brand.
It’s like everyone’s just wants attention. So give them reasons to get attention and then they’ll advertise for you.
Amara Andrew: And mostly what started it was the experience in the shop. So there’s no seating. It’s, I forget the name of it now, but you literally just walk up to this Mica,
Jeff Sarris: Mica,
Amara Andrew: Mica, that’s what it was, MYKA.
It’s like a creek. Yeah, it literally looks like you’re in Greece. It’s this like tiny little archway. It’s like in between h and m and another, another store, tiny little archway. That’s why there’s a line outside and it’s just like three very Greek looking people behind the counter. And it’s these giant like ceramic bowls that look hand painted, like they came from Greece.
You have, uh, all the toppings in there so you can have like goji berries or coconut flakes or whatever, bee pollen, whatever the hell, it’s wooden spoons. So it’s not like Cold Stone where everything’s plastic and it looks disgusting and it makes you sad. I, I don’t know. I’ve actually never been in a cold stone.
I’m just realizing
Jeff Sarris: Cold Stone not a sponsor.
Amara Andrew: I know. Sorry. Um. But they, it’s this whole experience where you feel like you’re not in Miami.
Jeff Sarris: I just like cold stone taking strays, just like stray bolts, a cold stone for no reason.
Amara Andrew: I was like, I literally have never been to a cold stone in my entire life. I’m realizing,
Jeff Sarris: I don’t think it’s as, uh, I don’t think it’s how you’re thinking of it, however, continue.
It’s just, I just, I just like that you’re just like, you know what? And turn the knife. We’re
Amara Andrew: like TCBY. I’ve been to A-T-C-B-Y where they have like all the plastic, it’s not an experience, it’s just pink and it’s like ble. But that feels so elevated and we all want that little bit of luxury in our everyday lives where like I saw it on TikTok and I saw someone in there and I was like.
Well, that looks fun. And it’s frozen. Greek yogurt too. Like it’s all the packaging, all the branding, all the promise of an experience. And as soon as we walk up to it and I see a hundred people in line, I’m like, we’re gonna keep walking. ’cause that doesn’t appeal to me. Yeah. Other people, every other, every other person though, they stopped because they wanted to be part of that experience.
So if you can make that an in-person experience and have at least a couple people talking about it, that’s gold.
Jeff Sarris: And who are you trying to get? Because they. Almost universally had women.
Amara Andrew: Yeah. This might might be strange.
Jeff Sarris: Yeah. Like younger women sometimes with their guy. Yeah. And like you could tell who was there by choice and who was there by the plus one, you just, you can tell on their body language how they’re interacting.
Like when you’re just like.
And then everyone’s all excited and getting selfies and stuff. It’s like Secret talk, like, like taking
Amara Andrew: video and the guys are just like a, a, a
Jeff Sarris: and that, that isn’t to say that TikTok is only women, truth, not at all. But they were, they targeted the specific range they want and they have a very specific avatar of person and they’re bringing them in and all that to say, if you want.
To bring a specific avatar of person, you should reach out and go to what is maven.com where we can help you with your hyperlocal marketing. ’cause this is all we do and all. We think about 24 hours a day, seven days a week when we’re not completely deathly ill once every five years.
Amara Andrew: I know. Thankfully it’s been literally once every few years
Jeff Sarris: uhhuh.
But yeah. But
Amara Andrew: hopefully that was the last one.
Jeff Sarris: I think we should wrap.
Amara Andrew: Okay. Gimme a beat.
Jeff Sarris: Defiant. One’s a great documentary, but anyway, we should go. Okay.
Amara Andrew: You don’t want me to
Jeff Sarris: wrap on the podcast? We, we, uh, Hey, can wrap. I feel like this picked up by the end.
Amara Andrew: I can wrap, I can wrap quite well.
Jeff Sarris: Oh, yeah.
Amara Andrew: You’ve heard me.
Jeff Sarris: Oh yeah. Should I play a, a song? I
Amara Andrew: can’t, don’t you dare.
Jeff Sarris: I’m not. Okay. Sorry. See you next week. Shout
Amara Andrew: it up. I’m like, bye.