636: Why Smaller Creators Are Winning Bigger Than Ever In 2026

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I have a really honest conversation about where content creation is headed in 2026 and what it generally takes to stand out when everyone and their mother is making videos. We talk about why the fundamentals of great content have never mattered more than they do right now, even with all the AI tools flooding the space with noise. So whether you’re just starting out,

00:26
or if you’ve been at it for years, I think you’ll walk away with a much clearer picture of what it takes. But before we begin, I just wanted to take a second to mention that I have a free e-commerce community that I’m incredibly proud of and would love for you to be a part of. It is a place where real sellers come together to share wins, troubleshoot problems, and support each other through the ups and downs of building an online business. You can join completely free over at mywifequitterjob.com slash community, and I would love to see you there.

00:53
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash community. Now on to the show.

01:04
Welcome back to the My Wife, Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to talk about content creation, which is the other side of my business where I create YouTube videos, podcasts, and that sort of thing. And it’s all kind of related to e-commerce as well. So we’ll touch a little bit on both topics today. And I know, Tony, you’ve been, you started a YouTube channel. You’ve helped start another YouTube channel that’s doing really well. uh What are your views right now just on content creation for 2026? ah

01:33
I was just complaining to you before we started recording about AI and content creation and how I don’t think it’s being done very well. But that’s true for everybody. I think some people are doing a great job. ah But yeah, I feel like because of AI, everybody can create content now, right? I think about our, actually this is good example, our friend Johnny, who’s an profitable audience, has a lawn care company. And he’s been making lawn care videos for…

02:02
the past, I think it’s like been a year or 18 months. And he said it’s really like taken off, right? He’s getting traction. uh But people like Johnny and I don’t think actually Johnny’s using a whole lot of AI in his video content creation. He’s not, I don’t think. No. But I would say people like him, people who have businesses where, you know, five years ago, content creation would have been basically impossible without hiring like a full time content creator. Now those types of brands.

02:31
can actually do a lot of this with AI and put out, I mean, honestly, endless amounts of content, right? There’s no limit. Yeah, so for me, for this year at least, 2026, I’m excited and I’m a little worried at the same time. We can start with like the positives. I feel like uh creators are actually becoming like mainstream entertainment. Like, you know, it’s funny, I was chatting with uh

03:01
one of my friends and he was like, Oh yeah, I was watching CNN the other day. I’m like, what you watch CNN? He’s like, Yeah, I just kind of leave the TV on on cable. I was like, you have cable. But seriously, like CNN is is gone down. I’m surprised they’re still up. I mean, their viewership is so low. uh Everyone’s just getting their content now from like

03:27
short form, TikTok, YouTube and whatnot. And it’s reflected in some of the deals that have been going on. Netflix, Hulu, they’re all signing creators. I think I just watched Dude Perfect do a partnership with the show also, where they turn it into this series. So I think that’s a huge positive as a content creator today. In theory, all these independents are

03:55
getting more views than traditional media are today. Yeah. And you see that. um And I don’t you know, we do not get political here, but I think a really good example of the impact of this was Joe Rogan. Right. uh So he’s he’s had a podcast for a bit, but his podcast is huge and has, you know, over time. I don’t want to say it’s mainstream, but it’s basically a mainstream commodity. Right.

04:22
Because of the guests that he gets on, right? So he gets I mean he had He’s had multiple I want to say that everyone on yeah But even to the president, know of the United States, right? It has been on the podcast But I think if you look back to that interview he did during the election Like that became a very mainstream piece of content. That was I would say equivalent

04:47
to like a CNN interview. Oh, way more than CNN. Well, equivalent in like authority level, not reach leaps and bounds above. like in the bucket of like, does this hold weight and credibility? Absolutely. Right. Whether or not you agree with any of it, it’s we’re just talking about the numbers here. And so I think when you look at that sort of situation and then other people.

05:13
that are doing the same types of things, right? Another person that’s gotten huge from short form and content is, and I don’t even know what this person actually does is Alex Earle. I don’t know if you know who she is. I don’t know who she is. She’s a content creator, but she ended up on Dancing with the Stars. um She was linked to Tom Brady, but once again, her stuff is getting mainstream um and is at the same level of credibility as someone who would be a

05:41
a legitimate TV star or um someone in the movies, right? So these content creators who back in, know, back in, we always say back in the day, right? You know, you’re like, well, you’re Twitter famous, right? Like you were on Twitter in 2010 and you had 200,000 followers. Well, now people who are Twitter famous actually can translate that into, you know, mainstream media at this point.

06:09
Yeah, I think, I guess what we’re both trying to say is it seems like the industry is much more mature than it was before. Like it’s well accepted that you’re a creator and that you do this for a living. The flip side and what I’m primarily worried about is early we started with the abundance factor. Like everyone and their mother can create content and it’s easier than ever to create content with the help of AI. And I…

06:39
I want to say a couple months ago, I was chatting with someone who has, who has like five automated AI channels that are generating tens of thousand dollars a month, almost on autopilot. Like he has these scripts that generate the script, pull in images and create these, uh, these long form YouTube style videos, which are, which are more or less screen shares and with narration. And that it’s working.

07:06
which basically means that people actually want to watch this. And the same goes with short form, like the TikToks and whatnot. People are just kind of finding ways to automate this sort of content creation, which in turn dilutes all the other content that people are creating by hand. And so that worries me a little bit. Like everyone has access to high quality tools now.

07:32
Which I think is a plus and a negative, right? Like I think it’s great that there are so many really fantastic tools that are not necessarily free, but at a price point that they’re affordable for anybody to get started. And that’s one of the things that we talk about a lot, right? Is that if you wanna create content, whether it be as a compliment to a brand that you already have, or you wanna just become a straight up content creator, uh you know, we talk about a teleprompter five, maybe five, 10 years ago was like,

08:01
three, 400 bucks, right? Now you can get one for almost nothing. A lot of the things that you needed to get started before are now very, very inexpensive or free. The problem is, is that I think it, we talked about this like two years ago. I think it was Spencer Hawes who did that whole experiment with creating an AI blog and all the articles were written by AI. Do Oh yes, yes. He did like 900 and some articles. I don’t know, it was a lot.

08:30
And he got he ranked right with SEO. But then all of a sudden that crashed. Right. Yeah. Not effective. So I feel like the same exact thing is going to happen here. It’s still new enough to where people are watching this automated content. Right. They are interested in it. But I think eventually we’re going to see the same thing that happens with this every time is that unless you have something new, interesting, an angle, a story.

08:59
it’s not gonna sustain, this isn’t a sustainable business for 15 years. Well, okay, let’s take the flip side of that. Let’s talk about just people using avatars of themselves even, right? And putting out good scripts and pumping out content. I’m looking through my TikTok feed, sometimes I don’t mind if it’s generated by AI, if it’s entertaining, right? And so let’s like not talk about the slop, let’s just talk about the good stuff.

09:27
Right? Yeah. Of which there is a lot. Yeah. There’s too much good content out there now. Almost in my opinion. Right. And for me, as I doom scroll on TikTok sometimes, like I finish a session and I don’t even remember who I looked at. Yeah. For the best part. That’s definitely true. So I guess what I’m trying to say is in order to stand out today, like you really have to do something memorable or unique.

09:56
or unique to yourself in order to stand out. Which honestly, that’s always been the case.

10:05
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10:34
And here’s the thing, I wasn’t even ready to sell yet, but knowing what I needed to fix meant that I could actually start preparing and I now had a roadmap. Everyone at Quiet Light has built or sold businesses themselves. So my advisor told me what needed to change. It was actually coming from real experience sitting across from buyers. And by the time I was ready, everything was positioned right and we attracted serious buyers. So if you’ve been thinking about selling someday, even if that day feels way far off, just getting a free valuation from Quiet Light

11:03
will make a huge difference. You’ll learn what you need to fix right now so you’re not scrambling later. And if you’re interested, go over to quietlight.com. It’s always been the case, but I feel like it’s even more important. So for example, like you were just talking about Rogan during the interview based podcast. I probably would not start an interview based podcast today. No. Right? Cause like they’re a diamond dozen. I think we talked about this in the last time we recorded.

11:31
When everyone and their mother wants to start a podcast, something is wrong. Like we’ve reached peak podcast. Yeah. Right. Which. But if you have. Yes, I would say this is not the time to start a podcast unless you have something that is so unique and different that you think it can get traction. Here’s the problem. This reminds me of I don’t know. I guess American Idol is starting back up and it’s 400 season or whatever.

11:59
is that there’s always those people that get on American Idol and they are not the best singer. But you realize that their whole life, people told them they were a good singer, right? Like their mom and their aunt and, know, and then they get up there and they’re they’re not that great. Right. They’re not terrible. They’re probably better than you or I. But they’re not they’re not like the level to make it as a singer today. Right. I feel like that happens a lot with content creation where like your friends tell you that’s a good idea.

12:27
Right? Or, you know, your mom likes it and then it’s like, oh, I should start a podcast because my mom thinks this is so interesting. Like, you can’t let your mom be the judge of, you know, whether you decide to do something or not. It has to be something where there’s like at least some proven level of interest before you do it because anyone can do it. And there’s so much out there right now. Yeah. So, you know, back in the day,

12:56
maybe three or four years ago, like you could probably just pick up a camera and just start creating like tutorial content. This is why it’s hitting me particularly. Like I feel like that was my bread and butter a couple years ago, right? Just come out and just teach something, right? But anytime you just teach something now, it’s, we talked about in the last episode we recorded where there’s this like summary button now, right? On all content. And so,

13:24
If you’re just teaching something, why should someone sit through your lesson? Why not just hit the summarize button? Right? Unless there’s a reason for them to watch you, which basically means that I need to step up my game now to go beyond the summarize button, right? Maybe be entertaining, maybe use more visuals that can’t be summarized. Otherwise, I see that trend continuing.

13:54
I agree, my only thought on that is not everybody uh can learn by reading. For me, I would much rather read something than watch a video. Unless it’s how to take apart a carburetor or something, then I want to watch the video. um But I do think that there will always be people who want to learn a certain way. Some people want to listen auditory, some people want to have it visually, some people want to take apart

14:23
whatever with the other person. I do think that, one, I do think you should up your game, but two, I do think that having all these different mediums is good, right? Especially for people who learn differently. However, with the summary button and the ability for people to dump a transcript into AI and get all that information, like you definitely need to have things in your content that make that less appealing.

14:50
to people, right? Like, well, I could summarize it, but then I’m gonna miss out on x, y, z.

14:57
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15:26
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s the challenge. Yeah. Because I just looking at my own habits, I don’t even listen to podcasts anymore. Like unless I’m running, right? And then you just get the transcript of it. I literally just get the transcript feed into AI and say, hey, just give me the top points of this. Like I don’t have time to listen to this like three hour thing.

15:55
Okay, but I think that yes, but there are still a lot of people who have time where they can’t read, right? They’re in the car, they’re driving, they’re walking their dogs. was talking to a friend yesterday and she’s like, oh, I listen to all my podcasts when I take the dogs out, right? And so she, so I, and you know, my son listens to podcasts all day long at work, right? Cause he can have an earphone in. um So I do think there’s still, I’m not saying to start a podcast by any means, but I’m saying that like there’s still people that will listen to it. um

16:25
But yeah, for me, I’m going to summarize it. I mean, I’m not I’m not saying like this is going to destroy content creation. I’m just saying it’s a trend that will probably increase over time, because at least on YouTube, they made it really easy with that button like the Gemini button. Right. uh But on the flip side, what’s good about content creation today is that the number of subscribers does not matter whatsoever. Yeah.

16:55
Right? So I guess that’s one positive that’s been happening for several years now, is you can literally pick up your camera or your phone or whatever, create a piece of content, and instantly get hundreds of thousands, even millions of views just based on the merit of the content itself. Well, we saw that with, we haven’t talked about Kevin in a bit. Oh, yes. We saw that with Kevin who, you know, obviously he’s done a great job of consistently creating content, but he created a video, I think it was like on Windows 10 or something.

17:25
I’m not a Windows user so I’ll probably mess this up. ah basically it was like he created this video that hit on a topic that everyone was concerned about in that moment. And so even though at that point he had five or six thousand subscribers, basically overnight quadrupled his subscriber number and then of course has now taken off because of the video because more eyeballs got on it. So if you have the right topic, I mean we talked about my son last week.

17:53
He had zero subscribers and no clout to push people anywhere. Instagram liked the content, right? Pushed it out. And he has a hundred and some thousand subscribers in 30 days, which is absolutely not normal. I want to put that out there. But it just shows you if the idea works, right? If it’s clever or if it’s interesting enough, that can happen no matter how many followers you’re starting out with.

18:22
So what’s nice about Kevin is he’s become like this authority on windows, right? And I think about some of the people or some of the videos that I’ve seen have gone viral. And I mentioned earlier, like sometimes I go through a session where I don’t remember anything that I’ve watched, right? It’s pretty easy to get views these days. You just do something off the wall or stupid, right? To get views, but you’re not gonna get any uh

18:52
You’re not going to get any influence from that type of video. Another really good example of this is NerdWallet. Yep. Right. So they’ve I mean, they’ve been around for a very long time, I think probably as long as you and I have probably longer longer. But whenever I I’ve you know, I’m like I’m into the travel hacking and the points and all that stuff. And so when I hear about, you know, some good deal, right, like, oh, get this credit card, you’re going to get X amount of thousands.

19:21
Points whatever I always cross check it with nerd wallet like I always go to nerd wallet read their reviews And I never will not do that right like until until they have like controversy or something obviously But like they have created such an authority with me right like and with millions of other people too I’m not the only one they like advertise the Super Bowl I think um But you know if you like that’s what Kevin’s done with Microsoft right like I’m not getting a credit card until I vet it with nerd wall

19:51
because I trust them completely to provide me with accurate information. I’m absolutely not going to go on TikTok and take a credit card recommendation without checking it out. So I think Kevin’s done this with Microsoft. People do this with all sorts of things, right? um And so I think if you can do that as a content creator, become the absolute authority, which I think is then why like niching down becomes really important.

20:19
Yeah, I guess my point in saying all that was focus less on the views per se and more on the influence factor that you have. Yeah. Because there’s a lot of people that just put out content just to get the views. Yes. But views in itself is not a good measure of your impact on whatever you do. So who did I watch recently? I want to say it was Ed.

20:48
From photo booth. I’m sure some of you guys listening have heard of him, but he’s he’s a pretty big YouTube authority and He actually shut down one of his channels Because he was attracting the wrong sort of people Mm-hmm, and when he focused he started a completely new channel focusing on content for YouTube creators for business and It’s good. It’s getting a fraction of the views as his other channel, but he’s making something like five times more money

21:18
Because the people he is attracting are his ideal customer and they’re willing to open up their wallets. Okay. But you, I see you fall into this trap all the time. Oh, I do. Because it’s you, right? I love the views. Yeah. So you’ll, so I remember this was a couple of years ago. You put out a video on like textile importing or tariffs or I don’t know. was like, it was about fabric. Do you remember this? Maybe it wasn’t about fabric. I thought it was about textiles.

21:48
I think I put out a couple things on tariffs. This was pre-tariff. This was like you put out something on sourcing or whatever and then you got all the it went like super viral and then you started making other videos in the similar vein but then like very quickly realized that all those videos didn’t do anything to like drive email signups or they do you remember what I’m talking about? was your time at Tmoo. Tmoo. Okay. Yeah.

22:13
I did a video on Tmoo which has gotten like 2.2 million views or something crazy like that. And those people were they’re basically deal seekers. Yes, are the worst people to get. But like how do you as a content creator? Because I mean, everyone, no matter what people say, I don’t even care. We hear it from Kellan. We hear it from Kevin. We hear it from everybody.

22:42
when you put that video out and it doesn’t do well, like in the first, know, whatever your time frame is, 24 hours, like you’re immediately second guessing everything. Like Kevin said, I have a bad weekend or Kellen said that if it doesn’t do well, because he releases on Friday, he has a bad weekend. I mean, we can talk about this because I literally just put out a video where it didn’t do well, like literally yesterday, in fact. And so this morning, what I did is I changed up the thumbnails.

23:11
split test titles and whatnot. And yeah, it’s going to be like a long week for me because I know my next video is not going to come out till next Tuesday. Yeah. So yeah, 100 percent relate to Kellen. But then you put out a video and it does really well. Right. It takes off. You get, you know, million views or something. But it’s not the right video. Right. Then what do you do? How do you keep yourself from?

23:38
Because I mean, the tendency is like, oh, I need to make five more videos on this topic because it’s resonating, even if it doesn’t resonate with the right people. Yeah, I’ve started to resist doing that. So I reserve those videos where I know that I want to get a bunch of views. I reserve those for when I’m down the dumps. Like if I’ve had a string of bad ones, then I’ll go back to a different angle on Tmoo that actually is relevant to the sellers. Mm hmm. Just to get

24:08
just to get some more mojo. Like, anytime I talk about e-commerce politics, because, I mean, it’s crazy, right? Like, at the time of this recording, we’re talking about terrorist to the EU, uh taking over Greenland. I mean, there’s just tons of news that applies to everyone on that front that are directly related to selling online. So anytime I need a dopamine hit, I’ll talk about that. And I know it’s gonna kill it. Am I gonna get any email subs from that?

24:38
Maybe just by sheer volume. Yeah. Yeah. Like the views will get me a bunch of email subs, but on a percentage level, no. Generally, it’s not going to be attracting people. Yeah. So how does a new content creator avoid that and focus on focus on the becoming the expert? Right. How do they avoid the the trough of sorrow when that happens?

25:02
I don’t know. thank God I haven’t been in that trough for several years, but I mean, it’s tough. And I think in the beginning, you do have to go with what works and just make more of it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Or you just have tremendous patience and you just slog it through and be willing to accept that you’re going to get less views, but a much more targeted audience. Yeah. Which is what Ed teaches now, actually. It’s hard for me to execute because I need that dopamine hit every now and then, but

25:33
I don’t know. I guess my point in saying all this stuff is if you focus on one thing and just do it very well, you will get a lot more impact than if you just chase views. And we all have the tendency to chase views, but at some point you have to see the bigger picture. And I think it helps to sell something outside of the content. Because if you’re just chasing views, you’re essentially trying to chase AdSense revenue.

26:01
which isn’t going to be your biggest moneymaker to begin with. Well, and you know, it’s interesting because I’m seeing that in the uh the raptive Facebook group. Facebook groups seem so old now. oh, don’t know. Do people still use Facebook groups? I don’t know. I mean, they do. But like I I’m not one of them. But you know, I’m in all these groups. one of the ones that I were I think it just appears in my feed a lot is the the ad.

26:28
Network Raptive, which is for websites, right? So you put ads on your blog and you’re paid, same way with AdSense and YouTube, right? You’re paid by the views on your website. And there are a lot of content creators that have been creating content for 15 years who were literally making a killing on ad revenue, even like 2018, 2019, right? Making 25, 30, $40,000 a month. So this is not like insignificant amount of revenue. But.

26:56
as times have changed, SEO has changed, Pinterest has changed, even Facebook if you were driving traffic from Facebook. And so they never had another revenue stream. They were pretty much 80 % ad revenue and then 20 % all the other things. um All of them are selling their blogs, all of them basically. um It feels like every time I’m in that group there’s someone else listing their website. And people that I know, people that I…

27:26
grew up blogging with because they were so website dependent on revenue as opposed to coming up with, whether it be digital products, leveraging a physical product, um creating a membership, everyone’s talking about cohorts now, right? Like that’s the big thing. um But yeah, think the same thing is gonna happen with YouTube, right? If all you’re doing is creating content for the revenue, for ad revenue.

27:55
you’re going to be in the same boat. Yes, unless you do it really well. Yes, unless you’re Mr. Beast, but now he doesn’t need to worry about anything anymore. He’s got TV shows and probably a He’s got other worries, I’m sure. The other trend that I’ve been seeing with content creation also is a lot of them are having their own events now too. I think Mr. Beast, since you talked about him, he’s got Beast games.

28:23
Yeah, a whole bunch of these other I listen to the all in podcast. I don’t know if you listen to that, but they have their own event that they throw uh every year. And what’s another event? Oh, the guys over at acquired, you would probably listen to different podcasts. We probably do. The acquired podcast has events. Shalene has an event. Oh, does she really? I didn’t know that. Can’t be more. OK. Yeah. But yeah, she’s another another perfect example of that.

28:52
And the other thing that I’ve seen change dramatically is the type of brand deal requests that I’ve been getting. uh Before it was all like long form, long form, long form. Now I’m getting asked for quotes more on the short form side. Interesting. Which I find a little odd because my long form is way better than my short form. For you specifically, absolutely. For me specifically, yeah. Yeah. But I…

29:22
I think that’s maybe where the audience is. Like, I don’t even know if long form is dying. I don’t think it’s dying. I don’t want to say that. But the brand deals seem to be more interested or in the short form videos. So I wonder if part of that in this is coming from having worked on the brand side is that brands want two things, right? They want conversions, obviously, number one, but they also want sexy.

29:51
Right, they want the metrics, the numbers. Like if I could go in front of a brand and say, hey, I’ve got these two content creators and they’ve got, you know, five million visitors a month to their website, you know, and they’ve got a two million person Facebook page and, you know, they, their eyes immediately got big and like, ooh, we want to work. Like it didn’t matter. Like if I said, hey, but they’re like, or they would see these people and say, hey, I really want to work with this person. And I could say like, hey, I know for a fact this person doesn’t drive a lot of conversions.

30:21
They’ll drive eyeballs, but they won’t drive conversions. A lot of times the brands are like, no, no, no, we want the numbers, right? We want the vanity metrics. And so I wonder if that’s part of the love of short form is that like the chances of a short form video going viral are much greater than a long form, right? Yeah, I would agree with that. So it’s like they can, you know, they can ask you for three short forms and, you know, potentially have two million views versus a long form video that maybe has 20,000.

30:50
even though the long form will probably at the end of the day, just by the way that long form is set up, right? The easier ability to link and, you know, tag products and all those things. You know, I feel like sometimes brands really get caught up in in the sexiness of it as opposed to like the actual nuts and bolts of what what can be done for them. I mean, to a certain extent, you can do everything with long form that you can with short form. Like I know at least on TikTok, because I did a brand deal with with TikTok and

31:19
my short form channels recently and they actually put their own ads, their own money behind ads to boost some of the things that I was doing. And then they get metrics for signups right away. Now in theory, you can do that with long form also. I just think that the way the world’s going is just short attention spans and more traction. Like you said, you get a ton more views on that video.

31:44
And maybe it’s just a better bang for the buck because I literally charge 10x less for short form than I do a long form. Right. And that could be it, too. Like if you’re saying and this is not what you charge, but like it’s one hundred dollars for a short form and you’re going to get one hundred thousand views versus five hundred dollars for a long form and, you know, ten thousand views. Like the math for them doesn’t make sense. And I guess I could now that I think about it, the other bonus is that entire minute long video is dedicated to the brand.

32:14
Yes. Whereas some of the quests I’ve gotten in the past for my long form is to just have a short one minute intermission, so to speak, in the middle of a long form video, which probably converts not as well, I’m guessing, than a dedicated short form video. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, it would be interesting to actually see that. I don’t I don’t think you’ve done anything where you’ve done long and short for the same brand. Have you?

32:38
No, I mean, you know, I’m not really into doing brand deals because I don’t like talking to, I don’t like the negotiation process and like the, I like to have creative freedom on everything that I do. Yeah. And for some reason, everyone I’ve worked with so far, with the exception of a couple brands, has been like super anal about what gets published. Yeah. Like to the point of like putting words in my mouth almost. And I actually told a couple of those brands recently, hey, I don’t want to work with you again, unless I have absolute creative freedom.

33:07
So yeah, that’s a whole that’s a whole nother episode, right? Yeah, that’s a whole nother episode. Yeah. When brands try to take over. OK, so here’s the other thing I’m worried about in the content creation side is all these A.I. avatars. I don’t know if you got a chance to play with the Sora app when it was out. I think all the hype has died down, but you can literally just take a picture of your face at different angles and then just start making videos of anyone’s likeness in the database. Yeah. Right.

33:36
And so I’ve seen so many deep fakes that like every time I watch a YouTube, a TikTok video now, where it’s just like a talking head. I’m starting to doubt whether that’s like a real human. Yes, me too. And it’s these deep fakes are just getting so good. And I can imagine maybe by the end of this year, it’s going to be pretty indistinguishable. Yeah. Right. A real person. And so like how

34:05
Once that happens, how do you know what’s real and what’s not anymore? Once again, this just shifts into the noise. We talked earlier how China is making it so that you need credentials to create something. I wonder if in the US we’re going to need something like that too. I don’t know. I would love that. That’s definitely bothersome to me. But on the devil’s advocate or devil’s argument on this is like,

34:34
We have so many people who come to the webinars or in the course and they want to make content, but they don’t want to show their face. Right. And they actually are like really smart about their topic. They’re not just using the problem I have is when it’s an it’s an avatar with content created by A.I. and there’s no like there’s no expertise involved by an expert human. Because I would say like, you know, A.I. makes a lot of mistakes. Right. They give you bad information.

35:03
And the longer I’m in it, the more I see bad information popping up and just absolute ridiculousness. But let’s talk about uh Charles in the course who sells old books, right? He knows more about old books than like anybody. He knows more about books in general, right? That’s true. But he doesn’t want to be on camera. I understand that. Not everybody does. And like I think he, know, and I don’t think he’ll ever do anything like this, but like he could create

35:33
and Avatar and talk about for people who are into this, like would be a very interesting content play on antique and in books and in, you first editions and all those things. So it would allow someone like him to actually produce content. Whereas now that’s really probably something he’s never going to do because he doesn’t want to put himself out there. I mean, there’s always exceptions, but I overall think that that rule is probably a good one. Just listen to the rule. You have to be an expert.

36:02
not an expert, but just have some sort of approval or even like a label on your account that indicates it’s a real person. So you’re accountable for the content that you’re creating. Yeah. You know what saying? Like they just need to make it harder to create an actual account or they need to verify your ad kind of like signing up for Amazon, right? Yeah. It’s now like a proctology exam to get an Amazon account. Yes. Like you to actually go on an interview and everything and have like a registered address with a, with a bill of some sort. Yeah. Do the same thing for content.

36:32
That way everyone’s held accountable for what they create. I think that’s probably the way to go. Do you think that will prohibit people from doing it? maybe not prohibit the bad guys, let’s just say, but prohibit people in general? Well, knock off half the spam accounts, I think. Well, yes, for sure. Which is good. I don’t know what your TikTok feed is like, but mine is a combination of clips of old movies and everything also, right? Clearly, it’s copyright.

37:02
Yes, I have a lot of that. I’ve watched a whole show with clips before. The other good news though, and this is good for me, is that uh polished doesn’t do well. How is that good for you? I feel like your stuff is polished. No, in terms of uh production level quality. You don’t see me with a whole array of lights and…

37:31
you know, different camera angles and whatnot. I think that at least this is for me, what I’m browsing short form at least, if something looks too polished, I almost always swipe away. Are you like that? um Depends on the topic, but sometimes, yeah. Because I like to see like the raw stories of someone, unless it’s like a skit, like unless it’s like an SNL skit or something like that. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

37:59
Yeah, I would swipe away. I don’t get a lot of that in my feed. So well, I probably because you swipe away, right? That’s true. Maybe it is working. So like anything shaky, blurry, uh low production value. I mean, I’m much more likely to watch at least on TikTok. Yeah, which actually brings me up to the other thing I was thinking about the other day, which was Instagram. Remember back in the day when we were first starting out, like Instagram?

38:29
Your Instagram feed was very curated. Like sometimes it even made a pretty picture. of that now. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they want reals. They want authentic stuff. Yeah. So I heard on a podcast like last month that they’re actually going to get rid of the feed. Not maybe get rid of it, but it’s not going to be visible. And what people will see is your real feed when they go to your profile. Yeah. So, yeah. They’re not getting rid of it, I think. They’re just

38:59
It’s not going the first. Yeah, the default will be. Yeah, not get rid of. But like the default view will be the reals, not the right. The the the pretty post feed. And the other thing I have to change, which I’m just very reluctant to do, is to change up my backgrounds and have more motion in the video. Yes. Right now, I’m just doing what’s easy, which is just literally popping myself down the chair and hoping that the content that’s coming out of my mouth is is good enough. But I don’t I don’t think it’s good enough anymore.

39:29
Yeah. So I’m not saying, your content is not good enough. I’m saying, yes, that there’s definitely a move towards favoring variation. Yeah, which I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s good. don’t know. And the other thing I was thinking about also was uh back in the day, you could just come on and in my case, give a lesson, be authentic. But I think what’s more important now is just storytelling.

39:59
Right. And just creating content when you actually have your own take on something instead of reporting the news. Yes. I mean, that’s one thing that I was doing for a while and it was working. I was just talking about current events and e-comm. Yeah. Right. But like everyone’s doing that now with avatars and whatnot. Right. So unless you have like a story or something to make it more interesting, you might just get drowned away in the news.

40:27
In like the in the noise so this is a chicken and the egg thing right because so You can’t just report the news you have to have an opinion on the news But why should people care about the your opinion of the news because you have created an interest in yourself to ah Get people to then want to know what your opinion is, but then how do you get people? know what? I mean? It’s like this cycle. Yep and so you have to be

40:56
interesting enough or have a viewpoint that’s so I don’t want to say controversial because doesn’t necessarily need to be controversial just needs to be interesting and different right then someone just reading the facts. I mean guess the main point here is uh for this year the way content is going you have to be more memorable than ever. Yeah. In order to stand out so you have to have like a really good backstory and then

41:24
be opinionated. mean, these are all things that worked in the past and these were required, you it was important in the past also, but I just think it’s even more important today with all the noise and all the content that’s that’s being put out like the sheer volume. But I think the good thing about it is that a lot of the things that we’re talking about are like you said, they’ve always been true. Yeah. Right. And this has always led to this will always, you know, help you gain success. So.

41:52
Not that you shouldn’t utilize the new tools that are out there and the things that you can do to make your workload easier and more efficient, but at the end of the day, the core is probably still the same. Be authentic, be different, um be interesting, right? uh And that’s what’s going to set you apart from your competitors. Yeah, I’m just thinking about I’m just being selfish right now. I’m just thinking like.

42:20
In the day, I could just depend on really good how-to content. But I think I personally need to step up my game now, right? That goes beyond how-to content and more like very opinionated how-to content maybe. I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I still believe that content is the key differentiator to the success of any business. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 636. And once again,

42:48
If you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and they’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.