The Factory: Why I ALMOST Broke My Brand (YouTube Analytics & AI)

Welcome to The Factory where we discuss what goes on behind the scenes of most of my videos.

Last week’s video wasn’t supposed to be a wrap up video, there was actually another AI that was on my calendar. When I initially wrote the plans in May, Grok was supposed to be in the mix and when I wrote the scripts in June, Grok was one of the scripts that was written and Grok was referenced in many of the other scripts. The Grok had a few moments that made the news and I decided to drop the Grok video. I then had to go back and drop most of the references to Grok (I actually kept about two references because in context, it didn’t make sense to pretend Grok didn’t exist in Perplexity). I actually still use Grok-3 because last year, Twitter had a good price for an annual subscription and it included Grok. So far, I haven’t seen some of the more questionable side of Grok other than the mobile version could be not safe for work if allowed, but otherwise, Grok seemed solid. Unfortunately, Grok-4 is behind a paywall, so I didn’t see the point in paying for it since I already paid for Grok-3. Will I move to Grok-4 once my twitter subscription ends, I am not sure since Grok is currently more expensive than any of the other AI chatbots (Grok is $30/month and the other tools are $20/month).
Are there any other Chatbots that I use that I haven’t discussed? Yes, I tried some of the Open Source local LLMs. I tried a few of them on my laptop because I was taking a twenty-three hour flight to Sydney Australia and I couldn’t sleep on the plane. Sometimes WiFi on the plane can be iffy and I wanted options on things to do. I was also taking an 18 day transpacific cruise back and once again, I didn’t know if I would always have working WiFi so I wanted a local LLM. I knew I would be planning an AI channel and working during the flight and cruise and using a local LLM seemed like a good idea. I wasn’t overly impressed and it didn’t fit my needs because its knowledge cutoff was over a year ago. It might work for you if you want the ultimate privacy and you have a machine that is powerful enough. Unless you are very technical, I wouldn’t recommend going that route.
Now, how did this episode come about? It was originally just a review of the past videos to wrap up the series. I decided that was boring and if you saw the past videos, why did you need a recap? Instead, I changed the series to hiring an AI assistant and decided that it should be similar to hiring an employee. You wanted some work done and there were different candidates that could do the job. And that is how this and the next couple of videos were born. How do you hire an assistant, once you hire the assistant, how do you give it the first few tasks, and once the assistant gets better, how do you give it bigger tasks. Then that changed when I saw the video and it turned into something in between a recap and hiring an assistant. Youtube is definitely hard.
In fact, this episode almost completely changed a few days before publishing because I used a tool that determined I needed to completely go against my brand voice and it wrote a script that was 100% not me. Fortunately I had a Gem that is specifically tailored to my business and also my brand voice and it instantly knew that wasn’t me and told me everything why I shouldn’t go with that script and go with the script that I wrote myself. Youtube Analytics can definitely get into your head and sometimes you need to be told the truth so you can stick to your guns and do the right thing.
Anyway, at the end of the month, after we help you pick a tool and show you how to use it, we’ll show you what happened when I used a Chatbot to help me plan a once in a lifetime vacation, and how it turned out. There were definitely things that happened on the trip that the AI did not plan for and you will not want to miss that rollercoaster of an episode.

See you next time, in the factory.