He Built an AI Empire… By Accident

Welcome to the show. How's it going? It's good, man. Thank you so much for having me And we were just chatting in like the green room beforehand And it's lovely to kind of connect with other people on on school who are also, you know, enjoying the ride So thank you for having me.

Yeah 100% and congrats on all your success in school Thank you, man. If anyone who's not aware, how would you describe yourself? So I have like a creative AI education platform and called gen HQ and We host it off of school and it's basically I'm an AI educator consultant creative and I do mainly like a lot of work on social media. So I have a social page called raw Keith And we basically act as go-to-market for a lot of the creative AI companies So when there's new models new releases of new AI tools in the creative world We will kind of cover it and then make a video on it and showcase it in like a nice fun jazzy way and just educate people on how they can also use it and then we kind of started school as a way that we could do more in-depth tutorials and That's where we teach people how to Find like AI work and how to price AI work and we invite like industry experts from around the world to come in and also educate in the platform as well so that you're learning from people who have like their boots on the ground who are learning about You know, sorry.

These people are teaching actual like Stuff that practitioners are doing in the space so they can also people can take actionable steps from them Which is great. So it's not just me. It's a there's a whole team of us We've got five employees working on jhq at the moment. That's awesome, man.

Yeah, congrats on the success I know you were saying you weren't you've won the school game. So I think you came second last quarter You weren't aware until you got a message afterwards, right? No, I was super new to the school game or school in general. I kind of just picked it as a platform to Kind of run the program off And I didn't know the school games was a thing until I got a message about it and they were like congratulations And I was like, this is awesome.

Thank you very much for this and then they sent over a trophy which is very kind So yeah, it's a it's an honor and I'm very happy on the platform. It's like really well built for community I wasn't like expecting that when I first started I was using it as like a place to house all of our education, but It's been really like it's just awesome for like housing community. So it's been really really awesome I've I mean there's two things at school I number one I've never seen so many people doing so well on one platform like the amount of people with great AI communities the just Doing insane numbers really? Mmm, and then number two is mental.

Yeah, sorry God No, no, you go you go you go and then number two. It's like so easy to use as well It's just it's like the Apple for for school. It is. It's it's very intuitive.

It's very simple to use I was actually like put onto it. I went to To an event with bolt. I don't know if you're familiar with their company. It's like a no-code AI tool and I met with a bunch of guys who were like Absolutely crushing it in like the AI automation space Nick Sarev was one of them shout out to Nick Nate Nate Herc as well like absolutely crushing it and another one Brock Mark there's a lot of guys in the AI automation space that I was introduced to who were on school who were just making like unfathomable amounts of money and I think at that point and I was posting like AI education on Instagram and socials I think I was making around 15k a month, which is you know an incredible achievement as it is But when I heard that these guys were making like fucking 300k plus I was like, oh my god Like what kind of money am I leaving on the table?

And I left that trip really thinking about it and I was like man There's there's got to be a way that we can start doing more creative AI education in a longer format And I had to look on the school platform and there was barely anyone doing it. So I was like damn There's a real opportunity right now so I just kind of went in for it and Got a good team together and we've just been we're trying to create 97 pieces of content a month at the moment So it's a lot of like we're on camera anywhere between three to six hours a day Recording educational content for the community. So it's a lot of work. But man, I just fucking love it, bro.

I love it Yeah, me too. Me too. Actually, I think there's like there's something about working hard, you know And especially when you're creating something like tangible like a video. Hmm where Even if you're totally exhausted by the end of the day, you just feel great, right?

Yeah, it's one of those that like when I finish the day I think like my met my brain is like it gets to a point where I am like mentally zapped but when I start my day, I Cannot wait to like bounce out of bed and just get going. There's an electric community There's so many people who are you know, you feel like they rely on you for this education And I just I love that responsibility of trying to help as many people as possible We have like a goal internally to try and create a hundred thousand jobs in the next three years in the creative AI sector so everything that we do is kind of oriented and targeted around that because we we want to put gen HQ in like universities the school system and standardized creative AI education more like a From like an actual like education bodies first and then you know What we're doing on school is kind of just the tip of the iceberg of like what we want to try and achieve So I'm loving it man. It's just so much to do. Yeah.

I love the vision as well. Like that's awesome That's awesome. You got a long-term idea on what you want to do. How do you I've seen your Instagram and the Creative there is really really nice actually like the way the videos.

Thank you, man. Thank you. Is that what your main marketing platform? That's a great question.

So we have a few different ways that we market gen HQ. So we actually sell b2b. So We sell it to businesses So we noticed early on a lot of people were asking for consulting work in creative AI for their marketing teams And I did some consulting work for a few companies like North Face fans Timberlands a lot of fashion brands And it got to a point where I was like, I I'm not huge a huge fan of traveling all the time It was taking time away from from work So I set up gen HQ as a way that I could sell kind of seats in gen HQ as a ticketed offer b2b And now we was about to sell 200 annual subscriptions to the UAE government And that's like have been a really good way that we've been able to kind of batch sell seats I marked it like appropriately that way which has been great So companies will buy like 20 seats for their their team for example on an annual subscription which has been like a really solid way for us to market not just to like the average consumer and then I Would say our main funnel though is through meta ads so I was posting, you know, we post organically on socials about 20 times a month and we also create new ads every week and We just like we have got very lucky with ads I feel like because we don't really have much experience with it yet either, but we started I want to say About two months ago running ads on to promote gen HQ and we've been getting about 10 to 20 new members a day and which is you know, kind of crazy when you think about it because the price of our community is 97 bucks a month, so that's like 2,000 anywhere between like a thousand to two thousand dollars in recurring revenue per day with new signups Which is great. We have a churn rate of like 20% as well So like there is that leaky bucket.

We do have to keep refilling people into the community, but Instagram has been a fantastic funnel for us. We use many chat. I don't know if you're familiar with many chat, but Yeah, it's an awesome tool. So we send out roughly around 20,000 DMS a day with many chat Because we've been using it now on every video for the last 557 videos now So that's compounded over a long time and we have we promote our community through all of those many chats We post YouTube content and promote it that way We post LinkedIn content and promote it that way and LinkedIn's great, too But the big kicker is Facebook ads they just it's so crazy for us at the moment.

We've been like spending We'll like spend a grand on it and then we'll get two grand back and we're like wait, that's weird That's like a double money glitch like what the hell is going on? and then we've just been like increasing it like a little bit a little bit a little bit and then I think we're now spending about five grand on ad like per ad And it's just returning as double every time and we're like how long can this continue for like this feels? Like a magic trick and so that's what we're doing at the moment and it just seems to be working That's amazing Congrats, man No, that's really really smart. Yeah Do you have some what about you?

How do you market yours? So for me like what I do is Alright, so We have a free school group and that's gonna like a funnel to send traffic to a group. So we'll We'll do a lead magnet inside the free group and we run Facebook ads as well to the free group. And then we funnel that traffic and there's like seven different ways of retargeting them from the free group to the pay group.

So like, for example, we have the auto DM that's like funneling people. All the videos have a CTA inside the classroom to buy their air profit volume. We post inside the community and so do all our affiliates too. And then also we have a pinned post at the top and we're always like posting a new one twice a day.

So it'd be like a direct response style post. From there, we also have like live streams and we have emails. So when people sign up to the free group, they put in their email and then we send that over to our CRM and they get an email funnel. So they get retargeted in like seven or eight different ways.

And then we're quite omnipresent. So quite a lot of people tell me like they see me everywhere. You know, like they'll see me on Facebook ads and then they'll see me on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, multiple YouTube accounts. And so like that helps a lot too.

And yeah, I mean, we've grown to $87,000 a month. I think on the back end, it's like $90,000 a month. But I mean, the beautiful thing I think about it is with an agency, I had a CO agency before. My margins were like 30, 40, 50%.

And you know, really vary like that. So to make that sort of money with an agency, you have to make like $300,000 a month. Right. And so like- That's insane.

It's insane. Yeah, yeah. And also we only launched in February. That's wild.

Congrats, man. That's sick. It took me like five years to do that with an SEO agency. So yeah, again, I'm a big, big fan of school.

And I think that one of the things I love about it is not just the platform is very simple, but also the funnels are simple. So it's just like, you take traffic from over here and you send it over there. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.

How have you found email marketing for conversion rates? Cause we did that for our launch and it didn't do too hot, but I like would love to know how you find email marketing. Does it convert well for you? Yeah, it does pretty much.

Like, I mean, we send an email to the list every day and that email also gets nurtured with content. So they're always receiving like a new piece of content from our YouTube. That's like, here's a new tool, here's how you use it, et cetera. Shit.

And then they also get the direct response email. If they haven't opened an email for three months, they'll get taken off the list automatically. So it's always like being pruned. And then we have a direct response copywriter who's, he's really good at sales copywriting and he writes emails and blasts them to the list.

So I don't think about it or touch it or anything. That's brilliant. I should start thinking about that. Cause like, there's a lot of people who do like newsletters and I feel like building a newsletter would be such a good opportunity as well.

Cause you obviously had your SEO agency. Did you build like a newsletter up off the back of that before coming into this? Or like, what was your growth strategy to start this? It was quite messy.

So what happened was like, I had a SEO agency and then because SEO is so hugely impacted by AI, I started creating content about AI and going more wide rather than just focusing on SEO. That grew my audience massively, but it also grew it because there were less people interested in SEO and more people interested in AI. And so I'd like three people in the same month tell me, you got to start an AI community. And I was like, I don't know if I want to do that, but I know I've got a huge audience on my email list and everywhere else that I'm not huge, but you know, a good size audience that would be interested in that.

And so I launched the presale. I didn't create the community or anything, just launched it on a Friday night and just wanted to check if people would actually buy it. We sent out one email, only one person bought it, right? So we sent like an email to maybe, it must've been like 50,000 people.

Only one person bought it, but I was like, do you know what? I can work on the offer. I can improve that within a few days. And then I improved the offer and the conversion rates went up and that's how we grew from there, yeah.

Yeah, ours was the exact same story. We had like a much smaller email marketing list. We had 1,500 people and I sent out on like the launch day and I was like, fuck yeah, I'm gonna get like 15 people to sign up to this. And I priced it at 350 bucks a month and no one bought it in like the first four hours.

And I was like, are you kidding me? I've just spent a month building this. And I was like, oh no, like this is an absolute nightmare. And I got an email saying like, reduce the price to $97 a month.

And people will convert. And yeah, that was the best advice that I got. So huge shout out to whoever sent me that email. But yeah, dude, that's super impressive.

That's really, really inspiring. So huge congrats on the success there. Thanks, yeah. Our initial target was like, you know, it was me and someone else I work with that kind of launched it.

And our target was like, we said if we make $10,000 a month, we'll be super happy. And even that seemed really far off. And then all of a sudden, boom, it exploded. Yeah.

That's awesome. That's so awesome. Yeah. The other thing I love about it as well is like, I don't know about you, but when you're running the agency or maybe when you're running a consulting service as well, there's a lot of pain and problems and a lot of people to manage and all that sort of thing you got client calls to.

Whereas creating a school community is so chill. It's so relaxed. Yeah. God, I wish ours was relaxed.

I wish. Ours is like so, just because like, I'm sure you like are aware of this too, but like just the general pace at which AI moves at is terrifying to try and keep up with. And I think people, I do not recommend people to, if you wanna have like an actual real social life and like a real good life versus the work-life balance is so tough because for us to deliver the standard of education that I really like hope to deliver, it's so hard to keep up with the rate of new tools coming out. So it's like when a new tool comes out for us, regardless of what time it is, we will make a video on it.

And that is like just a lot of very random sleepless nights and like a lot of, we really try to be the first to release like education on all of these tools. So it's just like complete chaos. Like our lives are at the back and call of these creative AI companies. So it's a little bit chaotic for us.

I should have picked something like knitting or something like basic that I could have like teach people on that would have given me like a good work-life balance. But AI is just like, it's been such a great roller coaster. Like it's just the best, best decision I ever made was getting involved with AI. Have you seen those communities in school where it's like someone teaching others how to make money scooping poop?

No. Yeah, so I honestly, you should look through some of the categories outside of tech, cause it's so funny. Yeah, I think there's one similar as well for horses, you know, like, and there's another one. I saw the interview on school news recently, really good video about it.

But basically this lady, there's a witch who makes like really good MRR too. And so I'm really looking forward to the school games meet up because it's gonna be so many interesting characters there. Yeah, I can imagine if, I mean, what category is that even in? I think there's one that's like hobbies or something like that, or it might be money.

Maybe it's in the money category. Lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, lifestyle. That is a lifestyle, isn't it?

Yeah, it's crazy. I remember there's, when you sign up to the platform or at least when I signed up, there was like a couple of different options on the homepage. And a lot of them were like different perfumes. And I was like, oh my God, like there's literally a school community for anything and everything.

And I think that's beautiful. Like I'm just so like hyper-focused on the tech and like AI group that that's really like where I look at and have kind of been idolizing a lot of, like Nate is a big inspiration for me and Nick as well. So kind of just like been inspired by those guys. I still got a long way to go to catch up to them.

I think they're printing like 200 to 300K monthly recurring revenue from school. So yeah, our school community has got quite a long way to go before we get there. Yeah, I interviewed Nate actually yesterday. Yeah.

How was he? He's crushing it. He's a super smart guy, super smart. And so humble as well, you know for like reaching that is so quick.

I think he started like a year ago It's mental Yeah, I'm I think I met up with him in like June last year in San Francisco and we stayed in an Airbnb together and I had no Actual idea even about school at this point and and that's when I found out about it And when I left they they said to me specifically and it rung in my head like every month that you don't have a school community or leaving money on the table and I was like I was like nah, and then I was like wait really and then I kind of looked into it a bit more and I was like Damn, they're right So I owe them a few beers, I think What about your day today? I know you said it's a bit mad and it's a bit crazy I'd be interested to know like what's your daily schedule like? Oh, yeah yeah, so Gen HQ is like a very it's like 30% of what we do and so we Obviously do a lot of content and out of the 97 pieces of content that we try and make School makes up for roughly a third of that. The rest goes on Instagram LinkedIn a lot of other places kind of most platforms But the way my day works at the moment is we'll have like morning meeting.

We have three internal editors all based in the UK Actually, we've got one based in Honduras and What we'll do is we'll sit down with the team We'll look at our production schedule. I can actually share my screen I feel like this can I share my screen and show or is this just like podcast format and because sometimes like it's better to show people than just like actually tell people and so what we will do is we like Control everything in monday.com. So like our production schedule like today we'll try and so today we'll have these deliverables that we have to try and achieve and We will be like, okay editor one. You're working on this editor to editor three me You know, I'll work on like the green section or whatever it is And people just be like divvied up tasks and then they'll go away and start creating the like social ads So here are like some examples of this is our social page and we kind of cover like loads of different creative AI tools and You know for example this one the editors I will come up with a concept and a format for what the intro should look like and then they'll They'll go into the execution phase and they'll go and build out like the advert so this is like an advert for a company called free pick and they'll go and build out the ad and It's just like this constant rounds of iterations over and over and over internally.

I Yeah, I'm sorry we yeah, so this interested so this is an ad for the yeah yeah, but 80% of the content that we make nowadays are Branded content. That's crazy because like when I've watched your content, I never it feels so natural. It doesn't feel like an ad, you know Yeah, I think that's you know, a very good feedback to here for us we when we started we were making a lot of I Mean I posted every day for 420 days in a row Before I think it was like maybe day 150 before I like even made a dime from I was just doing it for fun And I was always like making update videos just making like videos on different like creative AI tools And showcasing them in fun ways. So I think like where we come from is like a very natural Way of just making videos that feel fun, but then you also learn something at the same time I call it edutainment where we're educating and entertaining you at the same time.

And so that's like our goal with like a lot of the social content that we produce is the goal of it is to To try and do both of those things. So It should feel like very organic and very natural. But like this is a post in collaboration with LTX studio And our social page generates roughly around $300,000 a month in recurring revenue from sponsored posts So this is like one another column of our business and then gen HQ is another one and then we have two others which is We have consulting so Sometimes we'll get like a or I'll get a consulting contract to go in and actually do some work with a company where whether it's one of these creative AI tools or whether or not it's a company who want to learn like scalable systems that they can put into their company to create like a Thousand different images at the click of a button for creative AI So those will be different packages and then the last one is client work so we do I try to do at least like one piece of client work a month So that if I'm educating people in gen HQ I can't possibly educate people on how to actually find clients or how to Fulfill client work if I'm not doing it myself So it's really important for me that I still have boots on the ground So I'll make sure that I try and do at least one piece of client work a month And we've done some, you know client work with a lot of exciting people We've are in talks with Jason Derulo at the moment and a lot of other musicians artists a lot of really exciting companies Yeah, there's some really great people that we've been able to work with and we also partner with a lot of like creative AI Studios so one that we've we work very closely with is one called Wanda Studios and they're like in the UK. They're the largest creative AI like company that deliver Client work, so they just did a music video for Lewis Capaldi And they've done some other like great music artists.

So I get to work with them on some of their projects. That's awesome So you work with like some really interesting people as well. And yeah, definitely like a lot of tough clients who are like very picky Put it put it that way, but they're they're really cool to work with And how do you get the sponsorships for your Instagram like they come to you? Yes, so everything is inbound and so I'm very fortunate to have a management company who I work very closely with Huge shout-out to them.

They they are a team of five people To the two guys who founded it are they're like lawyers And so they handle all of our legal stuff the contracts the negotiations their killer killer sales Kind of sharks, so they're like great to have in my corner like wouldn't want to be on the other side of them So I love them for that So they handle all of my inbound and then they've got a couple of other people who work with them who also like go through our inbox because sometimes Like inbounds at the moment can get up to like nearly a hundred a day at the moment for creative AI work. So it's about Combing through finding out what are the exciting opportunities? and You know a lot of the stuff that we'll do won't be like the big money grabbing like big ticket items But the things that will have the most impact So we're you know in talks with the BBC at the moment to do some education. That's like for 500 pounds, right?

It's like no money. I don't it's not about the money It's just about having a really great impact and trying to steer the creative AI industry in a positive direction And that's what I'm like truly passionate about a lot of the money just comes as a byproduct and Which is super exciting, but it's just about making making fun shit that people resonate with. Yeah, I love that man I it's been awesome chatting to you really good to meet you and thanks for just sharing everything as well I'm being you know, so open. I think anyone watching will get a lot of value if If someone wants to get in touch, what's the best way for them to do it?

LinkedIn is the best place to reach out. I mean, I'm I'm active in school every single day as well So I think you can message people in school Like I'm very new to the platform, but you can message people in school, right without even needing to be in the community. So you can just reach out to me in school or Yeah message me on LinkedIn It's probably the best place to try and try and get a hold of me. Awesome.

Thanks so much No, no worries. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it Julian