The Art of AI-Powered Video Storytelling with Jeremy Toeman

What happens when a tech industry veteran gets frustrated with complicated video editing software? They build something better. In this captivating conversation, Jeremy shares his journey from early-2000s startups like Sling Media to leadership roles at media giants before launching his AI-powered video editing platform.

Whether you're an instructional designer looking to enhance learning materials, a marketer seeking to increase your content output, or an entrepreneur considering your next venture, this episode delivers actionable insights on harnessing AI's creative potential. Ready to experiment with the future of video creation? This conversation is your starting point.

🔗 Website and Social Links:

Please visit Jeremy Toeman’s website and social media links below.

Augie Studio Website

Founder at 50 Podcast Substack Page

Jeremy’s LinkedIn Profile 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Jeremy Toman
• 4:22 From Media Tech to Augie Studio
• 8:40 Reinventing Yourself Later in Life
• 18:17 AI Video Opportunities and Challenges
• 21:44 Balancing Efficiency with Storytelling
• 29:27 Startup Advice and AI Experimentation
• 42:36 Movie Pong and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Jackie Pelegrin: 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Designing with Love podcast. I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you information, tips, and tricks as an instructional designer. Hello instructional designers and educators, welcome to episode 70 of the Designing with Love podcast. I'm thrilled to have Jeremy Toman, the founder and CEO of Augie Studio, a social video editing startup, and host of the Founder at 50 podcast, with me today. Welcome, Jeremy.

Jeremy Toeman: 0:32

Thanks, jackie, so great to be here.

Jackie Pelegrin: 0:34

Yes, it's great. We were talking a little bit before this recording about how we connected, so I'm really glad that we're here and we're able to talk a little bit about what you do. So it's wonderful. So, to start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and share what inspired you to focus on AI video technology?

Jeremy Toeman: 0:50

Sure, I'll skip the when I was a wee lad in Canada bit, but I've been in the sort of tech and media conversion space for pretty much all of my career. In the early 2000s I was involved in startups like Mediabolic, which became part of TiVo, and Macrovision. I was the first employee in it, sling Media, which built the original Slingbox, which, for younger audiences, was the first way you could actually watch TV on the internet pre-Netflix, pre-youtube all that stuff Spent some time helping out other startups, launch companies like Waze and Sonos and Vudu and others had some startups of my own in the 2010s, also kind of around this space. Then I had kids, which is a different kind of startup, and spent my career yeah, I had to make a little pivot, as they'd say, and I went over to CBS and Warner Media and Etsy and spent some time in leadership roles over there and then that sort of set me up with this interesting kind of place in life where my kids are starting to get older.

Jeremy Toeman: 1:52

I had learned amazing things at these big companies and it started noticing a little hole in the market from a personal need, which is I needed to make a video to promote my original podcast with someone who's now my co-founder. I tried learning how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. Basically couldn't make any progress despite hours and hours of online tutorials, and started realizing that, you know, pro is the tool for professionals. And then, like, tools like CapCut are great for you know, influencer style videos, but I didn't want either of those things. I wanted something else. And rather, for you know, influencer style videos, but I didn't want either of those things. I wanted something else. And rather than you know, hire people to solve a problem for me. Whatever I decided, it was time to do another startup, and that's how Augie was born.

Jackie Pelegrin: 2:35

Wow, that's great. So you saw a need and what you wanted, but you, uh, and you looked at those tools that were out there and they were just too bland for you too. Cookie cutter, right. You needed something that was going to meet the need of what you actually wanted and were looking for.

Jeremy Toeman: 2:52

Yeah, yeah, to be honest, it was a little less like cookie cutter per se. It was more that pro is just pro. You could do anything right If you know how to use Adobe Pro, like you can make movies. It's like Christopher Nolan uses those tools or his editors do right. And I just wanted to make, for lack of a dinky little video promoting my podcast. So my needs were totally not at that pro level. I used to make this analogy that it's like you wouldn't learn to fly a helicopter to get milk from your corner store, right, like you just't learn to fly a helicopter to get milk from your corner store, right, yes, right, like you, just walk on over, right.

Jeremy Toeman: 3:26

I wanted something that's like the walk on over version.

Jackie Pelegrin: 3:29

That makes sense, okay, yeah. So Adobe Premiere Pro, was it? Just it had all the bells and whistles. But you didn't want all the bells and whistles, you just wanted to cut to the chase, right, yeah?

Jeremy Toeman: 3:39

Exactly. Yeah, you got it I love it.

Jackie Pelegrin: 3:40

Yeah, you got it. I love it, got it. That's great, I love that. So, as you mentioned in your intro, you've made some major shifts in your career, from working at WarnerMedia to diving into that AI-powered storytelling and podcasting. So what are some things you've learned about reinventing yourself later in life, and how do you think that shapes the way you approach creative technology today?

Jeremy Toeman: 4:00

This is a great question, jackie, and, to be honest, I might answer it differently tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I'm in such an interesting personal phase. I have just started the podcast on my own addressing this exact topic. This is my first startup in 12 years during which I spent only time at these mega corporations, and I think you know I don't. First of all, I don't have a this will apply to everybody kind of answer, I think.

Jeremy Toeman: 4:29

For me, I've always been in this sort of weird combination of wanting to learn, always wanting to learn something, and then I'm a really big adherent to this concept of ikigai, which is this Japanese principle around sort of meaningfulness in what you do, and I always now forget things on the spot. But it's the combination of what are you good at, what does the world need, what will you get paid to do? And oh, there's a fourth one in there too. It's important. Well, we'll, you know, I'll remember after, but it's all about centering yourself around your own skills, what you can get paid for, right, because if you're really good at something but the world won't pay for it, you're a volunteer and that's okay, and that's why I volunteer for things. If you're really good at something, or if you're not really good at something in the world, they'll pay really well for it. Well, you have to go learn about it.

Jeremy Toeman: 5:27

So I've sort of always used this to find things that are true for me. I care about team beyond anything. I care about who I work with more than anything. I knock on wood, but in 30 years I've spent less than two of those years working with or for people that don't excite me to get out of bed every morning, kind of thing.

Jeremy Toeman: 5:42

So I think, as I have been aging, I keep looking at you know how are these same criterias at play, like could I cure cancer? No, can I make cool, entertaining products that really important and smart doctors can use when they get home at night and they just need a break from their difficult days? Yes, I can, right. So I always try to sort of align what am I good at with those things? And, candidly, as my kids have become teenagers in fact, my youngest is off to school at RISD now I've time again to do startups right. I couldn't do a startup when my kids were eight because, a they need me more and B it's a whole different game and we're all having a lot of fun and playing games and doing things like that, right, but now they're in high school and their time need of mine is a lot less and I really like to show them also like hey, sometimes you don't get a job, sometimes you make a job.

Jeremy Toeman: 6:38

Right, so I pull all this stuff in. I know that's a convoluted answer, but that's how my silly brain works.

Jackie Pelegrin: 6:45

That's okay, I love it and it sounds like, as you were mentioning all those things. I relate to that so well because I've been in instructional design in higher education, did a little bit of corporate for a while, for going on 18 years. I've been in higher education and then in this field, instructional design specifically for almost 15 years and I never imagined I'd be teaching college courses now for four years and then I didn't think I would start a podcast two years ago. But yeah, it's amazing and I'm almost in my fifties myself. So it's like, wow, you don't think those things are going to come along. And then you realize, wow, there's a need I need to fill and let me just do it right, let me just start it up and see where it goes right.

Jackie Pelegrin: 7:29

You just never know where it'll take you, and I think that's the beauty of it is that so many people want those assurances and those things that they know. Oh okay, I know I'll make money with this and I'm like, oh no, if you're just doing it for the money, then where's the passion, right there? Has to I think the passion has to come first, and then the money follows it and and that's the reward right For having that passion and meeting the people's needs meeting the world needs.

Jeremy Toeman: 8:01

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, I, I and I really want to to the point of what you were just saying. I really want to also show my kids like and I really want to to the point of what you were just saying I really want to also show my kids like look, of course the quote unquote normal path is you go get a job, et cetera. But by showing them and like, actually it's not necessarily get a job, maybe it's make a job right, maybe it's make not only a job for you, like make a job for others right.

Jeremy Toeman: 8:26

The moment I go fundraising, you know, and I successfully close around, I can now hire people or hire companies or hire services, which is creating even more of an effect downstream. And I really like to think that you know, the venture capital money is there for entrepreneurs like me and you to go unlock and bring back into the world and create jobs. And sometimes we make it and sometimes we don't. But I love that they get to see different ways of how life could be, because, sure, getting a job is the direct and easy path and maybe that's what they'll all do and maybe not, and so it's good to show them the different ways.

Jackie Pelegrin: 9:00

You can be Right, because they all don't have to fit the same mold and all go the same path. They're all unique individuals and one may decide I don't have to fit the same mold and all go the same path. They're all unique individuals, and so one may decide I don't want to go to college, like you said.

Jackie Pelegrin: 9:10

I want to make a job and I want to be an entrepreneur. That's the great thing about today, with all the technology evolving and changing, is that there's more opportunities now than what you and I had when we were in high school. We had, I remember, in high school, having a pager and no cell phone. And I remember talking to some high school kids and they're like, what's a pager? And I'm like, oh my gosh, they haven't even heard of a pager. But I'm like, yeah, that's just the way this generation is. There's just some things that they don't. It doesn't click with them because they are not familiar with it.

Jeremy Toeman: 9:47

So it's funny. Yeah, I wonder, though, I'll bet, I'll bet, I'll bet you there's a market today for starting a new pager company. I'm not kidding, yeah, have you been following that? Like uh, cause it went through our family is that teenagers are now seeking out digital cameras again because they want to be able to take pictures in a disconnected way, right? So my daughter had one at summer camp, and so now I'm thinking I'm like wow, what you know, you brought a pager. I haven't thought about that. Well, I'll bet you you could go pretty trendy with Jenny for a little while on, like hipster pagers, you know.

Jackie Pelegrin: 10:13

Yeah, because it was. It was such a popular thing when I was, I think, a sophomore in high school and I was like I want to pay my dad's, like, okay, you want a pager, work for it, go, go, do it go, you know. And I was like, and it was funny because it was all, because it was the trend, that was what all my friends had. But we didn't have. We had to actually go to a pay phone. Right, have money, go to a pay phone to call somebody. So it's funny how. And when I told them that that that's what we had to do, they're like, wow, that sounds complicated and I'm like that's just the way it was. Know, we didn't know anything different back then. So it's funny.

Jeremy Toeman: 10:45

We didn't know better. We didn't know different. We didn't, but those were the choices.

Jackie Pelegrin: 10:49

You know Exactly, yep, you were just given something and you went with it and yeah, it's funny. I like that. So what I love, too, is you're working on some fascinating projects using AI to help creators and marketers tell stories in a new ways, which is great, because my background is in marketing, so I relate to this. So, from your perspective, what's the biggest creative opportunity AI opens up for things like video creation, and what's one challenge that we still need to solve in that area?

Jeremy Toeman: 11:54

this is again one of those. I think if we had been talking a month ago, I'd have a different kind of answer. We're at the point where I would say you know, there's always this going quote of like when was the best time to start doing X? It was like 10 years ago. When's the next best time? Today?

Jeremy Toeman: 12:10

I would say we are right now entered this phase where, if you are anywhere related to marketing whether you're an individual entrepreneur and you need to market yourself or some huge company somewhere video has to be part of the strategy. Right? We know that the I mean I can just bore you with stats right now, but any stat on like is video marketing important? Is going to be basically like uh-huh. So I would say this is the time to be experimenting with the various flavors and tools. So, first and foremost, there's multiple categories of where AI can help you with video In our case, for example, and there are other tools like Descript, veed and others, where you have content and you need to figure out how to make an ad with that content. Well, you can upload or create that content in those platforms, do some basic editing, push it live. So, video editing. I think the next category is around AI and video generation, and this is where you can say I want a blonde hair, blue eyed boy riding a unicorn through Times Square on a busy afternoon, or something like that, and make a clip of something that never existed before. And while a lot of that is purely for the fun of it, there's also a lot of pragmatic use. So I will reference Augie, but there are many other ways to do this. Inside Augie. You can go to our generate feature and, for example, upload.

Jeremy Toeman: 13:36

Actually, I was doing a project for a customer and we uploaded a picture of one of their dresses and then I said make it look like the model's spinning around showing off the dress she's wearing from a still picture of a woman wearing a dress on an all white background. And it did, and it looks amazing. And, yes, you can find artifacts and sometimes her hair flows in the opposite direction to her body. So it's not perfect. Three more prompts later and it will be. And so what I would say is you don't have to make stuff like Kid and the Unicorn in Times Square. You can take your existing assets now and start bringing them to life in a different way. Right? You have a simple product. I was doing a thing for a spice rub like a steak rub, and the picture was a pile of spices. I said, have a hand, sift through them, and it sprinkled them all around and it looks super realistic. So this is a great time to be experimenting.

Jeremy Toeman: 14:37

I will say your mileage may vary. You will probably spend a lot more money on tokens and such than you might want to at this stage. So it is definitely in a be ready for experimentation. But whatever you're doing, so again, if you have lots of your existing content, use AI editing tools to help trim them down. If you have no content, use AI generative tools to make something from nothing.

Jeremy Toeman: 14:59

But no matter what, experiment with getting yourself on one of these platforms. If you want to do influencer style videos, start with CapCut it's amazing, right. Or even the basic TikTok or Reels app You're out of excuses now, right? If you don't want to be on screen, use Augie. Make a headless video. If you don't want to record your own voice maybe you're not like the two of us and don't want your voice out there on things use a synthetic voice. Ours uses 11 labs for that, so there's so many options now Dive in, play around with them. The cool part is, most of them have free trials or limited free packages or services. So I would say this is the time to be experimenting.

Jackie Pelegrin: 15:38

That's great, Jeremy. I love that. Have you worked with any institutions or any in the education space, like with training, professional development types of things too? Because I could see that working well with education to create training videos and make them better and reinvent those too.

Jeremy Toeman: 15:56

That's right. We do have a lot of those uses. We have a lot of internal comms teams that use Augie Also to take things like you know. Let's say, the CEO gives a keynote at a conference and has a 45 minute speech. Well, you know, just like you and I chop up highlights from our podcasts, so do social media teams, for mega companies need to do the same thing. So there's plenty of use that we're seeing. We also have some educational use happening.

Jeremy Toeman: 16:22

We have a couple of film classes at a variety of high schools that we've given them free use of Augie to go help their students learn the basics of things like storyboarding, which Augie does automatically.

Jeremy Toeman: 16:36

Again, not with the goal of them doing everything with AI, but with a goal of them understanding how to experiment with storytelling before, for example, filming.

Jeremy Toeman: 16:47

Right, the most expensive part of making any video is filming, and so if you can shortcut that or pre-optimize it using, like we use a Getty stock assets to build your prototype, so if you can see like, oh, I want to have, you know, a man and a woman walking along the beach at sunset and then you know they're going to go off and play in the water and the dog comes, and that's going to be my. You know, think about every pharma ad, right, you know, if you can, you can prototype the whole thing and save all that money before going down to actually shoot. We even had a film student as an intern last summer making a historical film all on top of the side of Augie. So we've always made it accessible to educational facilities so that we like the idea that businesses can pay for it and educational use can be for free, so that we can help support other people who want to get their stories out. That's always been just sort of really important to me.

Jackie Pelegrin: 17:42

Wow, that's great. You know you mentioned that with that example of the film industry. It's funny because in instructional design we do prototyping, we do storyboarding, we do that kind of same thing, so that that way, like you said, you don't so when we go to create the e-learning or some type of micro learning, we're not spending all that time in the development stage and producing it and then having to go back and make a bunch of changes because it costs time. It costs a lot of money to time is money, right.

Jeremy Toeman: 18:13

So time is money yeah.

Jackie Pelegrin: 18:15

So we actually do, and I'm teaching a class right now about that very thing and it's about organizational and workplace development. So it's all about how OKR is like objectives and key results and how to. How do you help a company do that? But one of the things they're doing is they're having to do a prototype and do a storyboard and then later on in the course. So this, I'm in top, we're in topic two right now and then in topic five they actually build the e-learning module. So it's for a company, it's for a fake company, but it's kind of neat because it gets them that opportunity to really dive in and do that.

Jackie Pelegrin: 18:49

But I could see your, your platform working really well for that industry too, for learning and development, instructional design, those that are in that, because it's a growing. I don't know if you know this, Jeremy, but instructional design is all across, everywhere. It's in military, higher ed, corporate, nonprofit, so anytime you hear someone saying learning and development and I do this, that's kind of that's what I do. So it's pretty fascinating. Yeah, so there's a lot of parallels too between you know, uh, the creative fields, Um, so it's neat how we do. We do this kind of those similar things that they do in the creative arts as well. So it's kind of cool.

Jeremy Toeman: 19:31

I mean, it is creative, right, like I think about.

Jeremy Toeman: 19:33

You know, half of the stuff that we'll watch on the YouTube is an instructional video of some kind Whether I'm being edutained by a Mark Rober or whatever or some random channel that you follow, half the time we're on YouTube getting some kind of instruction on something. So I could easily see that demand. Actually, we had been working with a company that does, um, uh, industrial machinery and they wanted to take their instruction manual and effectively bring it to life, and so they've been doing that in augie. And so, um, they took, yeah, they they scanned in, or I guess they already had the digital, so that doesn't make sense, but they uploaded all of the frames of each page of the manual and then use generative tools to. You know, if it was like it was like a wireframe you know one of those like wireframe styles and they just had, you know they, they're still doing it, but they have, like the guys walking, not just standing or picking up the ladder, you know, so you can bring those things to life in a really interesting way.

Jackie Pelegrin: 20:33

That's great, and hopefully they've got an instructional designer that will look at that later, because that's one of the really interested in doing consulting work and things like that, because then I can kind of help bring you know companies along and say, okay, great, you want to do that, but let's make sure is it going to still work for learners still gonna? Is it still gonna make the same impact for them? Yeah, so I love that. That's great. Yeah, so you mentioned TikTok earlier. So with your work touching platforms like TikTok and Adobe, we know there's a constant push to create faster and smarter. Even I get that in work all the time. It's like get that out faster. We wanted it yesterday, right.

Jeremy Toeman: 21:27

Right.

Jackie Pelegrin: 21:28

How do you balance the drive for efficiency while making sure that human and emotional side of storytelling doesn't get lost in the mix?

Jeremy Toeman: 21:37

storytelling doesn't get lost in the mix. That's a really good question. I think the first statement I'd make is when we think about video, I think a lot of us especially if you're anywhere near our age groups, I'd say, if you're actually probably about 35 plus video probably carries not a stigma but a certain weightiness to it. We feel like, oh, if you want to make a video, that's going to be work, even if you're doing like an Insta or LinkedIn or a TikTok post. And I think if you're much younger, you don't feel that way because it's so. You know, you grew up, you're native in that world. So the first thing I'd say is you got to stop thinking like we think, which is? It's better to have more out there that is, for lack of a better phrase good enough than to make sure you're only doing one perfect video a year. Right? The reality check is most posts are forgotten. Most posts are to feed the algorithm. Right, and it's not to say phone it in every time. It is to say you don't have to be, uh, christopher nolan on every tiktok post. You don't have to work it to perfection. Depends a lot on what your brand is and what your products are. Right, sometimes good enough is playing along with a meme, or sometimes good enough is just one. You know I I this will be a really weird off topic I'm a big fan of this craft brewery called tree house. Well, they created a channel called tree house releases and all it is is whenever there's a new beer they've got maybe just a simple picture of it, maybe a little clip of the brewer who knows.

Jeremy Toeman: 23:11

But I like that way of thinking. It's like you don't have to be perfect with every piece of content you put out there. However, those algorithms don't care about your feelings. You know what I mean. Like, those algorithms expect to be fed and so, more important than the quality of your video, I mean again, don't put out garbage and please don't put out AI slop Augie is not an AI slop product. Don't put out AI slop Augie is not an AI slop product, but figure out a cadence and stick to it and then think about increasing it over time. It's almost like working out.

Jeremy Toeman: 23:45

Just go to the gym once a week. You don't have to be whatever on day one, in fact. Go to the gym, go for a walk. If you didn't do anything yesterday, go for a walk today. Just do something to show that progress Right. And the second thing I'd say, by the way, is then don't start until you're ready. Don't start, and then, seven weeks later, put a second post and then five weeks later you got another post. Get ready, figure out like, okay, our brand's going to post three times a week. One of those posts will be the making of, one of those posts will be interview with the founder, and one of those posts will be a thoughtful way of using our product or something like that. You don't have to go that crazy. You can in fact go to ChatGPT and say here's what I do. I need an idea for a low friction, tiktok cadence and suggested series of content. Like you know, what I'll say to anyone listening is you got no excuse anymore to not be experimenting somewhere right, absolutely Don't worry.

Jeremy Toeman: 24:45

You know the water's fine, Come on in.

Jackie Pelegrin: 24:48

Exactly. Yeah, I haven't been diving into video yet, but that's one thing I want to do because I've heard that that helps with your like you said the algorithms, youtube. It helps get the get you out there a little bit more and more visibility. And it's interesting because I started I actually did that with ChatGPT because I wanted to do a marketing promo for four weeks and I was like, hey, chatgpt here, it knows enough about my podcast and it knows that I'm writing a book too. So it's kind of funny because, like, well, yeah, you can do this and subtly promote this.

Jackie Pelegrin: 25:19

And so it gave me, jeremy, a whole four week marketing platform of what I could do here's what you can post and do it like this week on Designing with Love and do like a, you know, a post with it and I use Canva for all my artwork. So I did that and I asked it for ideas on what I could put on that to make it so it wasn't overwhelming, with too much text, right and, to you know, visually appealing, without too much information. And then it said well, then you could do do that on Sunday and then do a poll every Wednesday. And I asked her for some ideas and it just yeah, it just laid it all out for me and I kept prompting it and saying, okay, yeah, can you revise this a little bit? This is not quite what I was looking for.

Jackie Pelegrin: 26:02

And it just I kept working with the tool and it just all of a sudden I had a and it was like here, do you want me to, you know, put your marketing? And I just yeah, I was like, wow, this is great. So I've got it all running and it's all ready to go and everything. So it's. This is the second week it's been going and I just put all the posts and the polls in there and then just schedule them, so I don't have to do anything every week. It's all ready to go. So it's great. And I'm like, if this is really successful, I may actually do this on a regular basis, because if people love it this week on, you know, designing with love, I'll keep it going. So it's great.

Jeremy Toeman: 26:37

It's really easy. Yeah, I'll give you here. I pulled up in the tab really quick just to get a number I to support this sort of thesis that Jackie's giving everybody. I, for my podcast, which I started in April with no real promotion, I post on LinkedIn. In fact, I don't post everything on LinkedIn because otherwise my feed will just look like this constant self-promo thing. So I only post sometimes and I'm not active on social media.

Jeremy Toeman: 27:01

By the way, I'm not an Instagrammer. I gave up on Twitter back when it was Twitter and I'm just not interested. No disrespect to that entire world, it's just not what I want to do. And so I have decided, though, for this podcast, I created platforms for it, so it's got its own Insta, tiktok and YouTube accounts, and I started posting the clips not just to Instagram and TikTok, but I started putting them on YouTube Shorts. I will tell you, I have clips with zero when I started, with zero folders, and I still only have a couple, I think a couple of dozen. I have several posts now that have hundreds of views, nothing to promote them. They build the audience themselves, they're sending me subscribers, and all I'm doing is picking good snippets from my podcast, obviously editing an Augie, and that's, by the way, part of my excuse as a busy startup guy is how do I do a podcast? Well, it's like they say eating the dog food. It's like that for me.

Jackie Pelegrin: 28:01

Right, exactly. Yeah, I love that, and that's what I've been doing too is using those shorts and posting them. And uh, two weeks ago today I actually I had uh seven subscribers on YouTube.

Jackie Pelegrin: 28:14

I haven't looked today to see yet, but now, two weeks later, I think I have almost 300 subscribers and some of my shorts have and again, they're video shorts but they don't have any, you know. You know cause, you know this is audio only. So Riverside will take those. Uh, the AI and it'll, you know, bring those video shorts to me, which is great, um, but yeah, it's, it's, it's got the video, but it's just a background, so it's, there's no face to it. But some of them have, I think, almost 1,500 views or something like that. So I'm like, wow, that's amazing.

Jeremy Toeman: 28:47

That's great.

Jackie Pelegrin: 28:48

Yeah, oh, those little things right that you can do to really bring that up and be able to bring more visibility to what you're doing. And then it helps not only your podcast but it helps your brand, it helps your influence and your credibility, everything. So it's a. It's a win-win across the board. I love it. That's great.

Jeremy Toeman: 29:09

Love that.

Jackie Pelegrin: 29:10

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. So, as we wrap up, what are some top tips or advice for listeners who are looking to launch a startup like what you have, or getting into AI plus video, as we mentioned earlier?

Jeremy Toeman: 29:20

Well I'd say, if you've never, if you've never done a startup before at all, and you're looking to do venture-funded style startup, in other words, we could argue that any business is a startup, right, me doing my podcast is a startup. But just for this moment, if we'll agree that what we mean by starting a startup is something where you intend to raise venture capital or hopefully you're so profitable you don't even need that but you're going to build an organization and form a corporation, do all the things and, you know, maybe build a lot of tech to go launch something. The only thing I want to tell people is that it's so much harder than you've ever expected anything to be in. Ever have a co-founder, no solo founders. I tried it once way long ago, regretted that instantly and ever since I've loved having someone else out there to cry on their shoulders when they need to or be there for theirs when they need it. So startups are just plain hard right, it's a lot of work, it's soul sucking and also, by the way, it's the best thing ever.

Jackie Pelegrin: 30:27

And.

Jeremy Toeman: 30:27

I was once asked. I gave a speech on this exact topic and someone asked me a question like Jeremy, you seem to have endless energy for this. Where does it come from? And my answer was I don't know. And that's what I would say is, if you don't know where your energy comes from, but it's just always there, you've probably got some of what it's going to take, because you're going to need lots of energy and the reality check is not a lot of things. Refill that bucket a lot of the time. Right when we have wins, you know they're huge, but sometimes it can be a long time between wins.

Jeremy Toeman: 30:58

You know most of the articles people will read on a startup are about the successful ones. The articles people will read on a startup are about the successful ones. There's not as much written about the. There's some written on the glorious failures, but there's not a lot of the 90% of businesses that really just don't take off, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I've been part of those. You know it's part of the fabric of this, of this whole ecosystem. You're going to fail at something, right? I think it's a lot about making sure you're just really ready for that. So I have a huge amount of thoughts on like, before you start a startup, on getting into AI video, like as soon as you finish this episode and like and subscribe and all those cool things.

Jeremy Toeman: 31:38

Go try these products. Okay, ours is Augiestudio, but go try Runway. Go try Veo, go try Opus, go try Veed, go try these things out. Figure out what's the right one for your product, goods, service, brand and play with them, and if it's not doing the thing you need, try the next one. My biggest tip, though, is like figure out what you think you need going into them, because we're all a little different. Don't come to Augie expecting runway. We're not runway. Go to runway. It's great so, but no excuses, y'all Go try something. It's too much fun to play with this tech to not be playing with this tech.

Jackie Pelegrin: 32:17

Right, I like the advice you give not going into it blindly. Having a plan of action, knowing what is my goal, what are, what is, what are the outcomes I want? Right, it's what we call in instructional design. It's a backward design approach.

Jackie Pelegrin: 32:31

So instead, of starting at the beginning, we start at the end and we see what's our goal, what's our outcome, what is that, that end of the road that we want? And then we work from the backward, we work backwards. So we do that sometimes in curriculum design, because sometimes we'll start at the beginning where we're like, okay, we have to look at topics, objectives, and. But then the subject matter experts aren't sure where they what the, where they want to start, and they start to struggle with it. So I say to my curriculum developers, let's do backwards design and let's start at the end and ask them what do you want them to accomplish at the end of this course or at the end of this topic? And then they're like, oh, I want them to do this. And we're like, okay, great, Now let's build it from there and then we'll. Then we'll put the objectives in and we'll put those together. So that's kind of how I look at creative work too. Right, you have to sometimes do that unconventional approach to it.

Jeremy Toeman: 33:23

When we have companies come to us to get started at Augie because we always do a handheld onboarding they often will ask well, where do we start? And our first question isn't. I was like that's the wrong question. The first question is what do you want to create? And if most people will say, I'm not quite sure.

Jeremy Toeman: 33:40

So here's my tip for anyone who's not sure what kind of video to create, or anyone who's not sure what kind of video to create, go find a video you like. Right? If you're making a let's call it an ad for your product, Well, go find an ad for some other product. It doesn't have to be in your category, in fact, preferably not. That you like. You know. It could be an ad for pants or a car or a beer or whatever. It doesn't matter.

Jeremy Toeman: 33:59

But if there's a style like oh, start to think about it. I like a witty voice, narration in the background, or I want no narration, or I want a person talking at the camera, or I don't want that. Do I want you know? Give some thought like what is the video you like? What is the thing that triggered you to positively to buy a product, good or service? Then start building toward that end, right?

Jeremy Toeman: 34:24

Uh, if you see something that's showing lots and lots of cool CGI that's showing, you know, like if you watched any of the recent Apple's coverage the this was the week they announced the Apple iPhone, air and et cetera all of their videos were these really cool, like they exploded out what's inside the product and like lots of really nifty use of, I assume, cgi or AI, et cetera. Well, that's going to be a lot of work. You know that that's going to take a chunk of time. If, on the other hand, you want a video of you know a woman walking down the street going into your favorite restaurant, that's pretty easy to recreate. Let's go do that.

Jackie Pelegrin: 34:58

Right, yeah, and see what, yeah, what your. I like that because that's also where marketing comes in right Looking at what's what are the times. We call it benchmarking. We look to see where the other similar uh, types of products, like you said, or services, like you said, doesn't even have to be in the same industry, but something where, yeah, it sparks your interest and your attention. I love that. That's great. You know, cause I like vintage stuff. I think that's that's really neat, to kind of go back in time. So, who knows, maybe for my podcast I can do something like that, and you know, so that's neat.

Jackie Pelegrin: 35:31

Do you see, even like with podcasts, do you see that becoming something where because, as you know, we can monetize these podcasts? There's so many ways to do it? I'm I'm in the midst of finishing up my first book and it's based on one of the most popular podcasts I think it's number three on my top five now, because they shift and change, right, it's always an evolving type of thing where some will stay at the top for a while and then others will come because you're always releasing. But yeah, it's kind of neat because it came from that of just an idea of Buzzsprout sends out a weekly newsletter and they said here's ways to monetize your podcast. And one of them was write a book. And I'm like, wow, okay, can I do this? And I was like, yeah, just jump in and do it. So it's been a pretty cool experience to take that content and put it in book form.

Jackie Pelegrin: 36:21

So, yeah, that's pretty neat, so do you kind of see those types of things happening where we can cause I'll have to promote right the book and get it out there, and so I can see video being a great way to promote those types of things and get that visual appeal to it.

Jeremy Toeman: 36:37

Right, you could upload to Augie a picture of the front cover of your book, the back cover of your book and yourself, and give it the simple description that you're already using in your listing and say go, and in 45 seconds you'll have three video ads for your book. All that leverage your assets, plus access to something like 95 million stock assets from Getty Images, all with licensing included. So I would say, yeah, your scenario is exactly the one we want. I also want you uploading your episodes and turning them into video podcasts using some of our tools. So I'd love to see where you take this thing and I can't wait to see the book when it comes.

Jackie Pelegrin: 37:16

Wow, that's great. I love it. Yeah, I'm almost at the end. I have to look through it again and then I've got a. I'm trying to decide where I want to take it as far as if I want to go. I'm thinking hybrid publishing would be good. I'd like to self publish, but that's a lot of work. I don't know if I want to go there. I did that.

Jeremy Toeman: 37:32

I made a, I wrote a. I self published a children's book a couple of years ago Now. To be fair, though, I wasn't really focused on, I wasn't trying to monetize it, I was donating all the profits, but I'm glad I did it, I'm glad I went through the experience. But if I could find an, agent or a publisher or something.

Jackie Pelegrin: 37:51

Next time I certainly would. Yeah, it makes it a little bit easier. So I thought hybrid publishing would be good, because then I can still have that control over the content in some ways and not have to give it all over to them, right? But we'll see where it goes. I mean, there's always that possibility. So I've got a proposal set and ready to go and again, ai helped me with that too.

Jackie Pelegrin: 38:11

I just used it as a framework to say, okay, I've never done this before. It was my first time. Where do I start? What do I do? I said, what does a proposal look like?

Jackie Pelegrin: 38:19

And it just gave me an outline of what to put together and I was like, wow. And then it gave me different trends and stats and of course, it was three years old. So I was like, yeah, I got to go in there and actually do my own research and update the stats, because the stats were a little bit. I was like I don't want to present something that's three years old. So I went and updated my stats and my trends to make sure it was current. But it was nice because it gave me a good framework and I'm like, okay, this is great. I'm not starting from scratch and I'm utilizing something that's out there that can help me with it. So, yeah, I agree with you. I think it's great. Ai is really changing a lot of that, and I'm not copying and pasting by any means, but utilizing it to really take what I already have and just put it in a different format. So it's great. That's what it's great at.

Jeremy Toeman: 39:10

I look at it, it's like the ultimate leveler, upper right, and you do with it what makes sense and what is strategic, like it's going to let you write a proposal that you've never done before. It's going to let me do the same thing, right, or whatever. You know, we, we wanted to apply for a grant. I'm like I don't know what grant writing is supposed to sound like. I know how I write and I know how writing a pitch deck works. I know how this works, so I'm able to use AI to up-level myself with the thing I wasn't great at before. But you're also right. Like, please, everybody, edit that stuff. You know I've actually switched modes recently. In fact, I put a post on LinkedIn today because my co-founder and I vibe coded the game. By the way, talk about things you can do with AI.

Jeremy Toeman: 39:51

On Wednesday, we had an idea. We were playtesting it Wednesday night, putting on the final touches Thursday and published it on Friday, and in the post I wrote my own LinkedIn post, of course. But what I like to do now is I take the whole thing, I go to ChatGPT and I give it a prompt, almost like this this is a post I'm putting on LinkedIn. Don't make any edits or changes for the sake of making edits or changes, please identify for me either key grammatical flaws that might make me sound buffoonish, or poor phrasings that could sound more professional, but at the same time, don't lose any of my tone and do not rewrite my post and then, instead of getting here's a garbage version of your post back, I get a list of.

Jeremy Toeman: 40:36

Here are some specific bullets. So, for example, I had the phrase I still remember this. The phrasing I used is we were looking for a thing to work on. Well, chad Javidi said it might sound more professional to say we were looking for a project to work on. And it's true, right, that's casual talk versus sort of semi-business talk.

Jackie Pelegrin: 40:52

Right.

Jeremy Toeman: 40:53

And so now it's again. It's back into the place where I think AI works the best. It's helping me, not doing it for me. I don't want things done for me. I do want help at my sides at all times. So it's a little how I think about it.

Jackie Pelegrin: 41:08

I like it. Yeah, it's refining what you already have and just making it flow better. Yeah, that's true, because, like with my book, I had all the chapters. It was starting as top 10 instructional design models and theories. Then I expanded it as I started doing more solo episodes, so now it went from 12 chapters to 20. So I was like whoa bigger.

Jackie Pelegrin: 41:27

But it was funny because I put all the models and theories in alphabetical order, thinking that would be the easiest thing. So I started with 4CID, addy, went all the way down in alphabetical order and then I put all the chapters, the titles of the chapters, into chat GPT and I said, hey, I'm writing a book. Here's the chapters. Do you think this is a good order? And chat GPT said Well, you know what you might want to start with the one, the foundational models and theories first, and then progress and go to the more complicated ones, for CID is more complicated. So I'm like, oh, my goodness, that's a great idea.

Jackie Pelegrin: 42:02

So I switched things around and then I put it back in. I said, okay, how does this look? And then it said, yeah, you're doing better, make some tweaks here. And it was like revelation. I was like, wow, I don't know if I would have thought of that, I maybe would have down the road, maybe with a publisher, but I think it's more polished, yeah, and so if I do go to a publisher, I'll be like here you go, here's all my stuff. If they look at the proposal and they love it and they're like, yeah, the sample chapter looks good and we like where you're going with it, and in the proposal it's got the chapters, but then it's got information about each chapter, just like a sentence or two, just to give them insight into it. So I'm like, yeah, so I feel like it's a lot more refined and ready to go. So that way it's less work on the backend, right, and maybe it can get published faster too. So AI is great.

Jeremy Toeman: 42:54

Yeah Well, you just did some of the things an editor's going to do, right. They're going to be like Jackie I love this book, but I think it would work better this way. You've just done that work for them, right. They'll still come at you with things. One of my other favorite things that I've given it's actually now in my permanent instructions for ChachiBT is long story short. No sycophantism. Don't try to suck up to me. Don't tell me it's great. If it's not great, you'll have to make me feel good. I got other people for that great.

Jackie Pelegrin: 43:22

You don't have to make me feel good, I got other people for that, right. Yeah, exactly, I love that. That's great. So before we wrap up, are there any other any more tips or advice that you can think of?

Jeremy Toeman: 43:36

I would say the next thing to be yeah, I would think I want to suggest that people go off and start experimenting a little with. You know, once you start, if basic chat, to be D, is sort of like your 1.0 and then you're doing things like AI, video and stuff which is probably like a 3.0. I would also go suggest people start experimenting things with what? If you've heard the term vibe coding? Yes, so these are apps like Replit and Lovable and Cursor that let you describe an idea and build a product from it, and I think it's just a good brain exercise to be able to just, you know, it's like, it's like Lego for grownups in a way, right Like whether it's building you an app or a productivity hack or a game, like I just did, or whatever, but it's it.

Jeremy Toeman: 44:14

It lets you like. It's like flexing some set of muscles you don't even realize you have. I think it's just a good kind of brain pattern exercise as much as anything else designers and all the production people that they have over there.

Jackie Pelegrin: 44:47

But it's really cool because they're utilizing AI and we just got a demo about that with vibe coding, where they're utilizing that with all their people there, and I'm like wow. So it was amazing to see it used in curriculum and just taking complex things like science, engineering, those types of things and bringing it to life in so many new ways. So it's great. I love it, yeah.

Jeremy Toeman: 45:09

Well, you can see the one we built. I'm sorry, we built a movie pongapp. If you're a movie fan, we built a game it's called movie pong where basically you go back and forth naming movies and actors who are in them and you're sort of trying to it's like we call it pong. You're trying to pong your opponent by if they, if they name an actor in a movie and you can name another movie with the same two actors.

Jackie Pelegrin: 45:34

Then you get a point kind of thing.

Jeremy Toeman: 45:34

So it'll probably be massively evolved by the time this episode drops Cause. We're just sort of winging through it day by day, but looking for feedback, look for anyone who wants to experiment with it.

Jackie Pelegrin: 45:43

I would love to, because I remember being in grade school and that Pong game on what was it? Atari? Yeah, it was on Atari, right, the Pong game? Yes, it was on Atari, and it was just the two white rectangles and then it had the ball, and you would go back and forth. Oh, my goodness. And then I love movies. So is it all types of genres and all ranges like?

Jeremy Toeman: 46:05

Yeah, it's, oh, it's, it's all the movies. We have a database of all the movies. So yeah, movie pongapp.

Jackie Pelegrin: 46:13

I'm going to look that up and I'm sure a lot of people will look that up. That's great. I love it. Thank you so much, jeremy. I appreciate you sharing your insights today. Your experiences, your tips and expertise are definitely going to inspire my listeners, and I know that for sure. So I appreciate it.

Jeremy Toeman: 46:26

Thanks, Jackie. It was great to be here. Thanks for the great conversation and great questions.

Jackie Pelegrin: 46:31

Absolutely yes, and AI it helped me do that, so I can thank AI for that. But of course I tweaked them, so I love that Great. I look forward to having you back on the show again soon.

Jeremy Toeman: 46:43

Sounds wonderful. We'll have a great rest of your day.

Jackie Pelegrin: 46:46

You too, thank you. Thank you for taking some time to listen to this podcast episode today. Your support means the world to me. If you'd like to help keep the podcast going, you can share it with a friend or colleague, leave a heartfelt review or offer a monetary contribution. Every act of support, big or small, makes a difference and I'm truly thankful for you.