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00:00:01
How He Gained 32,000 Followers Using AI as a Creative Partner
17 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire sits down with Jason Moore, founder of Midnight Oil Productions, to explore how AI is reshaping storytelling, content creation, and even the church world. Jason shares how he helps businesses and churches communicate their message more clearly, why human creativity still matters in the age of AI, and practical ways entrepreneurs can start using AI without feeling overwhelmed.
The conversation dives into ethical AI usage, the importance of keeping your “soul” in your work, and how AI should function as a collaborative partner instead of a replacement for human creativity. Jason also breaks down how he’s using AI tools to grow his audience, scale his content strategy, and sharpen his creative process.
Resources Mentioned
• Midnight Oil Productions – https://midnightoilproductions.com/
Timestamps
• 00:01 – Jason Moore’s background and how he helps churches and businesses tell compelling stories
• 04:18 – Why storytelling and communication became Jason’s life mission
• 06:22 – How to simplify your message and identify the three things you should be known for
• 11:19 – The importance of objective feedback when refining your brand and messaging
• 14:24 – Ethical AI usage: why AI should be a “do it with you” tool instead of “do it for you”
• 17:25 – Practical ways beginners can start using AI in business today
• 19:36 – How to avoid confirmation bias and use AI as a collaborative thought partner
• 22:28 – Why iterative prompting beats trying to create the “perfect prompt”
• 24:39 – Using AI to improve creativity, productivity, and content workflows
• 26:50 – How Jason used AI-powered content creation to grow to 32,000+ followers
• 30:31 – AI image generation, design workflows, and improving your prompting skills
• 34:10 – Jason’s expert-led business trend report: reels, AI mastery, sales struggles, and the future of media
• 37:29 – The legacy Jason hopes to leave behind through storytelling, creativity, and helping others communicate clearly
Connect with Jason Moore
• Website – https://midnightoilproductions.com/
• Email – mail@midnightoilproductions.com
• Facebook – https://facebook.com/rubberpoultry
Recommended
Transcript
00:00:01
Ken Freire
Welcome to another episode of the Solo Scaled Podcast. I am your host, Ken Freire, and today I have Jason Moore, the founder of Midnight Oil Productions with me. And the reason why I'm really excited to talk to Jason is that we've been talking a lot about the age of AI and how AI is revolutionizing our world today.
00:00:22
Ken Freire
And predominantly, it's also revolutionizing churches and how churches tend to be a little bit more skittish when it comes to new tools and how to adopt them and how to use them.
00:00:33
Ken Freire
So I'm excited to talk about Jason on how, one, he's using it for churches, and two, how to ethically use AI for your business. Because you may be listening to this and wondering, I know I should get on the AI bandwagon, but don't know exactly how to do it, don't know where to start,
00:00:43
Jason Moore
Hey,
00:00:50
Ken Freire
and you're just really confused, Jason Moore is your man to talk to today. Jason, thank you and welcome to the show, man.
00:00:56
Jason Moore
hey Ken, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
00:00:59
Ken Freire
Yeah, so Jason, before we dive into your origin story, tell us, man, what is it that you do day to day?
00:01:07
Jason Moore
yeah That's a great question because I do a lot of things. Primarily, i am a consultant. I work with churches to help them better what they do.
00:01:18
Jason Moore
i do a lot of hospitality consulting and that that sort of thing. But I also went to art school, so I'm a graphic designer, media producer, and inside and outside the church world, i do a lot of that kind of work. And Here lately, I've been doing a lot of content creation, kind of for kicks, but starting to gain a pretty solid following on social media and that kind of thing.
00:01:43
Jason Moore
So I Oh, and I as I guess you'll talk about I'm also an author, I've written 14 books, and, and a public speaker. So I do about last year i did 44 speaking engagements. And I do a little bit of everything. So
00:01:58
Ken Freire
Yeah, just 44. That's nothing. You know, that's only two thirds or almost two thirds and a half, if you want to call it that, of your weekends gone. Or.
00:02:07
Jason Moore
Yes, well, some of them I do from the comfort of my studio in in my basement, but I actually just got back from a seven day trip where I did six speaking engagements over the course of a week and a bunch of different states and and so on and so forth.
00:02:22
Ken Freire
Whew.
00:02:24
Jason Moore
so
00:02:25
Ken Freire
Okay. So because you do a lot, if you were to synthesize, like, what is it that you ultimately try to aspire to do for people?
00:02:32
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:02:32
Ken Freire
Because you have a lot of mediums, what is it that you you accomplish for them?
00:02:35
Jason Moore
Yes.
00:02:37
Jason Moore
I would say more than anything, I try to help people tell their story in as compelling a way as they can. And so, of course, in the church world, that might mean that they are sharing the good news with people. And how do I help them share the gospel in ways that are as compelling as as can be, that that sticks with people, that is memorable, all those kind of things.
00:03:01
Jason Moore
I also do a lot of work in the secular world, and I try to help businesses, you know, individual clients tell their story in a way that gives them the best shot at building relationships, which leads to business and all those kinds of things as well.
00:03:38
Ken Freire
Sorry about that. My wife just came in.
00:03:40
Jason Moore
That's okay. All good.
00:03:42
Ken Freire
It's the only person that can interrupt me during the recording. I'm like...
00:03:44
Jason Moore
Hey, at you know, that I give my wife the same permission, so all good.
00:03:50
Ken Freire
Okay. Let me just pause here for a second.
00:03:54
Jason Moore
Are my levels okay for you? I'm seeing as, you know, I can see on the bottom of the screen, both of our levels, and it looks like my levels are really quiet and yours are are solid. are you Do you have what you need from me?
00:04:05
Ken Freire
I am seeing pretty good... It's looking pretty good on my end.
00:04:08
Jason Moore
Okay. Okay, cool.
00:04:10
Ken Freire
Yeah. All
00:04:14
Ken Freire
right, Jason, thank you so much for that synopsis. I'm curious, why did you decide to jump into this venture out of all the things? I mean, you're kind of a jack of all trades, right? You're able to do a lot, but you're like, hey, I want to be able to help people communicate their message, their story.
00:04:30
Ken Freire
Why go down down that road?
00:04:33
Jason Moore
Well, a really kind of crazy part of my story is that as early as like third grade, i knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. Like in third grade is about the time that I discovered like I could draw in ways that other people couldn't.
00:04:48
Jason Moore
And everybody wanted me to draw a picture for them. And then sometimes people would describe what they wanted and I would draw it and all of that. And I just always kind of loved helping people bring their vision to life or bring their story to life and that kind of thing. So I will say that I spent most of my childhood and and even into early adulthood, my dream was to go to Hollywood and make movies. And I thought, gosh, it'd be fun to tell stories at that scale.
00:05:15
Jason Moore
But yeah, and this might not make sense to all of your listeners, but in high school, I felt a call to ministry. I felt a call to use my gifts to help the church better communicate its story. And so rather than moving to high I went to art school and graduated top of my class. I mean, Funny thing is the director at the school sat me down.
00:05:38
Jason Moore
a large church in my area wanted to hire me, and he sat me down. and He was like, please don't go to that church. You could have such a great career. you know And I'm like, I know this doesn't make sense, but I just felt a calling to to help the church better communicate and tell its story rather than me just go and tell Hollywood stories. And I probably i probably would have made a lot more money and I and i had more faith. fame and fortune and all those kinds things, but it really was just following a call. So I get to do that both in the church, but also I really love to help small business owners, people, individuals that might have a dream, make that dream a reality by, by again, telling their story in compelling ways.
00:06:16
Ken Freire
Yeah. What have you found for most people? they They have a story, but they don't know how to communicate it clearly. What's the first way that you typically help them to get that story out there?
00:06:28
Jason Moore
Well, I think the question I often ask is what sets you apart? What makes you different? Because, you know, we all have shared stories. There are things that people can replicate. But I find that everybody has some unique thing or unique approach that they take or the way that they see the world.
00:06:46
Jason Moore
And i try and help people kind of distill whatever it is they do into what is your unique voice? What is that story? What is the part of the big story that you tell that is uniquely you? And so I find that people tend to want to I'm bad at this myself sometimes, to tell too much of your story or to to do too many things. You know, i had a company I started back in 2014 that created explainer videos for companies. And it was all motion graphics kind of stuff. I did a lot of work with Penguin Publishing. I did book trailers and that kind of thing.
00:07:25
Jason Moore
And we always tried when we were working with a client to say, you get three things. What are your three big things? Because your your software, your story, whatever, you might tell you might do 20 things, but people can really only take in like three of them. So in my view, it's like you've got to write your synopsis. Like that's the the little blurb on the back of the book. That's enough to get you to pick up the book. And then you go home and read the whole book. But how do we tell enough of our story in a very intentional way to get people to want to invest in in the whole relationship and knowing our whole story?
00:08:00
Ken Freire
You know, from a marketing standpoint, I think about this a lot for people. Like, you'll see this, they have a value proposition. And then after the value proposition, like, what are the three things they're known for? You know, like, and you see this a lot on websites.
00:08:10
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:08:12
Ken Freire
They're like, oh, we do this. And then here's how we do it. But man, it gets convoluted so fast. Like, i and i'm I do this too, right? I'm even in the process of writing a book right now. And I'm like, forcing myself to not do this.
00:08:26
Ken Freire
But we're like, oh, yeah. i'm I'm good at this, right? Like say it might be helping people scale. But what I mean by scaling is, and then you try to add like 15 other things to it, right?
00:08:36
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:08:37
Ken Freire
the The layering of it. How do you avoid people from layering too much and just like, you got to be these three things known for these three things, not like, hey, I'm scaling, but I'm also about productivity because you need productivity to scale kind of thing.
00:08:51
Jason Moore
Yeah, you know, it it is really hard to sort of figure out, like, what are your your main things? This is one a way that actually AI is is helpful, that sometimes you can give it a bunch of data and say, help me distill this down to, like, the most important thing. I had a an organization that wanted me to come and speak to their organization and say,
00:09:13
Jason Moore
they asked me to send my bio and I sent my bio to them and my bio was way too long. And so they're like, we need like a 500 word bio, not a or actually, I'm sorry, it was like 100 word bio, not a 500 word bio.
00:09:26
Jason Moore
And I'm like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to take and distill everything that I do down to you know that many words? And I gave it ChatGPT and said, OK, here's my bio. I need like a version that's one fifth the length of this.
00:09:40
Jason Moore
And it was amazing that somehow it it managed to make it still feel like it was all of it. But it was only just, you know, the hundred words or whatever that they wanted.
00:09:52
Jason Moore
I also think that this isn't as big a deal as it used to be, but back when DVDs, which is a long time ago, and even Blu-rays, commentaries, always loved listening to the filmmakers talk about the stuff they cut. And they're like, oh we shot this whole scene. i mean, it was one of the most expensive scenes. It was my favorite scene in the movie, but it didn't propel the the story forward. And so you can watch the extras on the DVD or the Blu-ray of the things that got cut. But in order to tell the best story we could tell, we had to make some hard decisions. And I think that's the thing is we're so in love sometimes with our own material or we feel like something is so important that we include it. But it it bloats whatever story we're trying to tell.
00:10:38
Jason Moore
And then people can't, they can't find the most important things because it's surrounded with stuff that's not as important as the most important thing. So I don't know that I can always successfully get there myself.
00:10:50
Jason Moore
And I don't know that I can always help people do that. But I push as hard as I can to help people kind of determine what are the the three main things or the what, it doesn't have to be three, but what are the main things that you do and not not mentioning every single aspect of of what we do.
00:11:00
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:11:08
Ken Freire
What's the framework that you typically use to help them cut things? Because I think that would be really important for them, like our decision matrix, if you want to go and super business-y.
00:11:16
Jason Moore
Yeah, you know, I mean, for me, it's less of a... a systematized thing. it's It's a lot of back and forth conversation.
00:11:27
Jason Moore
It's a lot of clarifying questions. You know, it's sometimes, okay, so you just told me two things. If you had to pick one of the two of those two things and you had to leave the other out, you know Again, it it kind of reminds me of like back in the day when Twitter came around and you had 140 characters. You got really good at figuring out how I might need 200 to say what I wanted to say, but since I'm forced to put in 140, I'm gonna find a different way to say this that's more scaled. And and so i I don't really have a specific process for how I get them down to those things other than just a lot of conversation.
00:12:08
Jason Moore
The other thing is, is that it's really good to have an objective voice. So one of the many things that I do and in my consulting work is I offer what I call secret worshiper consultation. So I just did this a week and a half ago in Florida.
00:12:24
Jason Moore
A church will bring me in. i basically take notes from the parking lot into the building. I look at signage. I look at hospitality practices. I listen to language in the service to see what is insider and and all that kind of stuff.
00:12:37
Jason Moore
And then I do a report afterwards, a verbal report, and then I do a written report. But... i'm I can be an objective voice and sometimes we're so close to our own practices and our own, you know in this case, and our our own buildings, our own environment that we miss stuff.
00:12:55
Jason Moore
you know So I'm sure you've heard the the term nose blind. We go nose blind, like you can't smell it anymore and it's there.
00:13:01
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:13:03
Jason Moore
Somebody else walks in, they smell it immediately. So I think that what we can offer to people offer to businesses that we're working with is to be that objective voice that doesn't have as much passion around the individual aspects of a business, but that, you know, to me, I know you really care about this because of, you know, all of the time that you spent developing it.
00:13:25
Jason Moore
To me, that doesn't seem as important as this does or or whatever. So sometimes I'm just trying to be that objective voice that is helping to sort through the tough decisions on how do we get really intentional about the story we're telling.
00:13:37
Ken Freire
Yeah. And you know what I think is so invaluable here is that you could have easily said, well, I help them use AI, which AI can be extremely helpful to help discern a few. Discern is the wrong word, but like help them to distill a few of those things. But ultimately, they need a human individual that can discern the process of like,
00:13:58
Ken Freire
This is where you need to go. this is what you need to cut. Like see their, almost see their emotions, right? As they're processing through it and be like, I'm discerning enough to know this is the way to go.
00:14:03
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:14:08
Jason Moore
Absolutely. And, you know, that's in the work that I do in the church world. i am very cautious. my My mantra when it comes to AI is to embrace the technology, but exercise restraint and how you use it. i think the thing that we have to keep in mind, whether you're secular or sacred, it doesn't matter if in the church or in the business world, is to remember that AI does not have a gut check.
00:14:33
Jason Moore
It doesn't know how something feels.
00:14:34
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:14:36
Jason Moore
It doesn't. When I'm talking with a church leader, I might say, if you go to AI and say, what song would be perfect for this moment? It might analyze a library and pick out a song that has the right words, but have no feeling at all if tonally, if that music is too upbeat or too slow or You know, it doesn't know what that song feels like. But as a human, we do know what that emotional connection looks like. So I love AI to be objective on certain things. But then I think we always have to have people in the mix. And my my caution to any business owner or any leader, really, is that if you become
00:15:18
Jason Moore
too isolated with your AI, you can start to lose a little bit of that human connection. The other thing I would just remind your listeners of is just to just to remember that you have a soul and AI does not. And if you don't bring enough of your soul to what you're doing when you interact with AI, then you get really soulless outputs. And so I will...
00:15:41
Jason Moore
hear people talk about, you know, I tried having ChatGPT write this thing for me, or Gemini wrote this thing for me, and I didn't really, it just didn't feel very, you know, it was dry, or it was, you know, just didn't feel right.
00:15:54
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:15:54
Jason Moore
And I think part of the reason that happens is that AI does not have a soul, so it doesn't, it can analyze what other people have written, but it can't fully understand the emotional weight of what those words mean.
00:16:07
Jason Moore
And so, I just think it's important that we keep people in the mix and we use AI. I would say more than anything, my my greatest belief about AI is that it should be a do it with you, not a do it for you.
00:16:20
Jason Moore
And there are certain things it can do for you, but I think you've got to be in the mix as you as you use the technology.
00:16:26
Ken Freire
That's great. Jason, I want to pause here real quick. Jason, you're you're spot on on the reality of that being cautious with AI.
00:16:33
Jason Moore
Thank you.
00:16:36
Ken Freire
Now, I know right now there's a lot of early adopters to AI. We're one of them, right? We're like, let's let's use it. But there are a lot more people who, instead of being cautious, they're almost like fearful of it. They're not even using it. And there's a lot of business owners who are not using it.
00:16:51
Ken Freire
And it could be a detriment to their business. So for those individuals, like what are some practical tips, maybe mindset issues that you could help them with to say, hey, let's start implementing AI and where would be a good spot for them to use it?
00:17:06
Jason Moore
Yeah, I actually just did a call this afternoon before I was on with you with a group of church leaders, some of which were talking about how scared they are of it. And going say,
00:17:17
Jason Moore
I am a big believer in the idea that demonstrating rather than debating is often going to give you the best opportunity to engage with a tool like this, because we can debate all day long about the dangers of it and the environmental impact and all those kind of things. But when I can show you what it does, In fact, I actually got invited to do a training in Florida today based on that call because I was talking to them. I said, let me just open it up and show you what you can do. And i showed them how ChatGPT could help organize thoughts. And someone said, how can we teach our people about how not to get scammed with AI? And I i said well, here's what you could do. And then I opened up ChatGPT and it put together a whole program on how to do that and what questions to ask. And they were so blown away by it. So first, I would say that people ought to dabble a little. And the wonderful thing right now about AI, I hope it stays this way, but at least in its
00:18:19
Jason Moore
infancy right now, it's free.
00:18:19
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:18:22
Jason Moore
You know, I mean, there's free options. So I would encourage people to jump into ChatGPT or jump into Gemini and and ask it to help you with a problem that you're dealing with in your business. And you'll be shocked at how good it is in guiding you through whatever challenge you're going through. So dip your toe in the pool. Try it out.
00:18:44
Ken Freire
Yeah, so as they're dipping their toe, I know sometimes what can happen And that sometimes is most of the time, AI can be very people pleasing.
00:18:55
Ken Freire
They're just going to help like, you know, if you if you input it the wrong way, and you're like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this, what do you think?
00:18:56
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:19:01
Ken Freire
They're like, oh, yeah, that's the best idea ever. And you're like, actually, that's a horrible idea.
00:19:04
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:19:06
Ken Freire
How do you mitigate it as someone who's dabbling for them to get as accurate of information as possible and not confirmation bias?
00:19:09
Jason Moore
yeah
00:19:14
Jason Moore
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that is definitely something that you have to think about. One of my favorite ways to use AI, and this is something I tell the church leaders I work with all the time, is to ask it to take on the opposite perspective or to be the foil to your ideas, because sometimes I want it to be the skeptic to ask the hard questions I'm not thinking of. and And another way that i a lot of people are, they have the wrong mindset about what AI is or how to use it.
00:19:46
Jason Moore
I don't think we should treat AI the way we've always treated computers. in that it used to be that you gave a command and it did a thing, or you gave it a query and it produced the answer to that query.
00:20:00
Jason Moore
I don't think of AI as a command or query type of situation while it will do that. I think of it more as a collaboration or as a conversation. And so the more that you have back and forth with it, most of the time the reason the AI fails is that you haven't given it enough information to be successful. So I part of it is reframing the way we think about AI. So to treat it like a collaborative partner, treat it like an intern that doesn't know everything, but it knows some things. And when you begin to talk to it and and give it context, so it understands the task you're after, the role you want it to play in that task. what success looks like, define that for it, give it examples of things that you think are good. So if I'm trying to get ChatGPT to write something, i have an example of what I think a good written article looks like, I can give it to the AI and say, look at this.
00:20:55
Jason Moore
here's what I want to do. I want something that has this kind of a feel or tone. And then success would be that we write something that is X, you know, it's not going to give you an exact word count, but around this length with this style, but here's what my vision is for it. So there is some learning to talk to it that we have to do. But here's another tip that I give people all the time. AI will teach you to use it if you ask it how to use it. So you say, ChatGPT, I know nothing about using a chat bot. What are some of the things that I need to know to have a successful interaction with you?
00:21:31
Jason Moore
And it'll give you a whole laundry list of things to do. And then if you follow that, you're going to have better interactions than if you just jump in and start asking questions or start doing a thing because you don't know know how to talk to it quite yet.
00:21:36
Ken Freire
Thank
00:21:43
Ken Freire
Man, that right there is a fantastic tip because I had to almost kind of learn the hard way from watching all these videos of people and they're like, hey, make sure you tell it the context and what role you want it to play and all this stuff.
00:21:54
Ken Freire
And I was like, I could have just asked it himself or itself, right?
00:21:58
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:21:59
Ken Freire
And it probably would have given me the same information than hours of me you know watching videos early on when AI was first starting to come out.
00:22:06
Jason Moore
Yeah. And you know, there's a, I am not a big fan. Well, I appreciate the the idea for a long time in the early days, all you ever heard people talking about was becoming a prompt engineer and how do you engineer your prompt and this, that, and the other thing.
00:22:14
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:22:24
Jason Moore
I don't think that there's some magical incantation that if you just get all of the right things in your spell, this one prompt to rule them all is going to give you everything you want from AI.
00:22:37
Jason Moore
Instead, i think you have to do iterative conversations with AI where you say, here's what I'm trying to comp, you might give it a little bit of information that's gonna give you something. And if that thing is not right, you're going to say that's not what I'm after. And here's why it's not what I'm after. And the more you shape it, you know, I think of it a little bit like I'm also a physical and traditional artist. And when I'm sketching something, you know, when you start out, it doesn't look at all like if I like I do portraits of people. I've been hired to do that and things in the past. And sometimes in the beginning, you're like, oh my gosh, this doesn't look anything like them. And then you start shading, you're like, oh, it's starting to get there a little bit. And you just have to keep working the the the sketch until it takes on the right shape and you get things where you want them to be. And then eventually,
00:23:24
Jason Moore
when you put in kind of that final bit, it turns into the person that you want. Same thing is true with AI, like, it's, it's probably not going to do exactly what you want to do on your first prompt. But the more you help shape and sketch what you want, eventually, if you interact with it enough, and you go back and forth, you get what you're after.
00:23:44
Ken Freire
You know, Jason, as we talk about AI, I love that iterative approach because that truly changes the game where people don't feel like it has to be perfect right off the bat.
00:23:55
Ken Freire
Because that's what a lot of people struggle with, perfectionism, right?
00:23:55
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:23:57
Ken Freire
It's like, why don't they jump into AI?
00:23:58
Jason Moore
Right.
00:23:59
Ken Freire
Because they feel like they have to be perfect at it. Why don't they use it well enough? It's because they feel like they have to be perfect. And you're just giving us permission to like, just dabble, just play, just move.
00:24:08
Jason Moore
Yeah. And, you know, i would venture to guess that most of your listeners have learned more in life from their mistakes than they have their successes. I mean, sometimes I feel like I learn more and when, oops, I shouldn't do that again.
00:24:20
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:24:20
Jason Moore
and And here's another tip I would give your listeners. When you're working with and you're and you're going back and forth and you get something and you just don't like the way it's written it or it's the image that it's made or whatever the thing is.
00:24:36
Jason Moore
every What I almost always do is I'll take whatever it's given me as a starting point. For me, I typically find that AI gets me 60 or 70% of the way there and then it's on me to get the last 30% done.
00:24:50
Jason Moore
I mean, most of the time AI is not gonna do all of it for me and I really don't want it to.
00:24:51
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:24:54
Jason Moore
Like I still wanna be creative and I still wanna shape what I'm doing. But here's what I'll do, and this is my tip. After I take the 70 or whatever, even 80% of what AI has done, I'm going to bring my 20% to it, finish everything up, and then after I'm all finished, I'll give it back to the AI and say, I want you to learn from what we've done here. Here is what I ended up doing with what you gave me.
00:25:18
Jason Moore
And because like chat GPT has persistent memory, it's going to learn from all those interactions. So I wanted to start to recognize what I'm bringing to the mix and what success looks like so that it knows how to get closer to that success each time we interact with each other.
00:25:35
Ken Freire
That's a fantastic tip. i I've done that a few times. i need to start doing that more. So I love that.
00:25:41
Jason Moore
I found for me that it it does a better job and now then it starts to anticipate the changes that it knows that I'm going to make. And so it makes more of them ahead of time or or it avoids the mistakes, I guess, because it knows, hey, every time you give me something back, you're not doing this or this or this anymore.
00:25:58
Ken Freire
Yeah, that's great. So, so Jason, what I want to do real quickly, you've given us a lot of tips on how to use AI. I'm curious, how are you using AI to grow your business? Because you got a lot going on, man. You got your you're everywhere. What's been the the strategies you've been using to grow to to grow your business?
00:26:18
Jason Moore
Well, back in October of last year, well, let me say this at the beginning of 25, I thought I am going to start being more intentional about creating content to grow my my influence, my following on social media and that kind of thing. And so I started more regularly producing content, uh, kind of first started out on Tik TOK and was starting to, uh,
00:26:43
Jason Moore
have a lot of success and traction there and I had a few little viral hits and stuff. And interesting thing was about halfway through the year, TikTok changed our algorithm and nothing that I made worked on TikTok and I started posting more on Facebook.
00:26:57
Jason Moore
Anyway, in October,
00:26:59
Ken Freire
Thank you.
00:27:00
Jason Moore
I re when Sora came out, I started doing more videos and I do a combination of things. I do kind of old nostalgia. I do kind of fun stuff. I do some political commentary type things.
00:27:12
Jason Moore
And, all of a sudden, like I started getting some traction by posting regularly. But everything I did, i would kind of run through ChatGPT and say, OK, so here's my concept. This is the script I've written.
00:27:26
Jason Moore
Help me know like help me with keywords. Help me with what time of day should I post this? I analyze the data or have chat GPT analyze the data on the results of a video. So from October until today, I've grown my followings grown to about 32,000 followers, just in a few months, that seems to go up like every month. Right now, I mean, i I have two videos that I just posted that are about a half a million views just in the last three days.
00:27:57
Jason Moore
my My guess would be that one of the two of them might even hit a million by the end of today or tomorrow based on what I've been seeing. But I'm using ChatGPT to help me strategize.
00:28:09
Jason Moore
So I feel like it has better knowledge based on what keywords work for what videos. It'll sometimes tell me, don't post this right now, wait until seven o'clock.
00:28:20
Jason Moore
you know all that So far, that has that has served me well, when to respond to comments, when not to respond. Sometimes I have to argue with ChatGBT. I'm like, I feel like I need to go.
00:28:35
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:28:39
Jason Moore
But, you know, the other thing is, is that I i use it for creating branding and and things in the work that I'm doing. So I love using a combination of Gemini. I'm a traditional graphic artist, but I like to use Gemini or ChatGPT or MidJourney or Ideogram to get me started on crafting, you know, logos and designs.
00:29:05
Jason Moore
graphic content and all that kind of stuff that I will almost always tweak, but it gets me a good part of the way there.
00:29:10
Ken Freire
Yeah. And that's, that man, I wish I could have your graphic design brain because every time I, and this, and I bring this up for a reason because every time I try to use Mid Journey Nano Banana, Gemini's thing.
00:29:25
Jason Moore
Yeah.
00:29:25
Ken Freire
to prompt correctly, the inputs, I don't have the artistic expression to to prompt it correctly.
00:29:26
Jason Moore
Yep.
00:29:32
Ken Freire
the inputs It's like, oh, it's good. But then I see my other friends, graphic designers, who are like, because they're an expert at it, when they're like, hey, I want this dimensions. I want it to look like this. I want it bold, aesthetic. like They know the right language.
00:29:46
Ken Freire
It comes across so much more like, wow, that's awesome.
00:29:46
Jason Moore
Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:49
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:29:50
Jason Moore
I do think having traditional skills definitely enhances what I get. But and you probably have tried this, but if you haven't, most of the generators have a describe feature where you can give it an image and then say, describe this to me.
00:30:06
Ken Freire
Got it.
00:30:06
Jason Moore
And sometimes you can teach yourself a little bit about what makes a good design a good design by asking AI. to take a look at it and tell you what it sees. And sometimes it'll describe for you like a certain lighting scheme or what kind of camera or this is a fisheye lens or you know whatever. And if you can start to learn, you can start to learn some things just by the language that AI is using when it describes it because you can use that language then when you describe what you want to the AI. The other thing is is, I think a lot of people underestimate
00:30:40
Jason Moore
the value of giving AI a good example. So if you've, one of the things that I've done really since I was in art school, in fact, they taught us to do this when I was in art school, is to collect references.
00:30:44
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:30:52
Jason Moore
So I had a physical folder back when I went to art school in the late ninety s And I would just stuff it with stuff. Like I'd save junk mail. I'd get a postcard that I'd be like, I don't want to buy this service, but I love the design and I'd stick it in there. And then I'd pull it out someday when I was like stumped. A client wanted something like, oh I like the colors on this or whatever. I would create on your folder, on your hard drive, on your computer, a folder that is references. And I just stick stuff that you see that you like in there. And then you can always go to ChatGPT or Gemini and say, I want something that has this aesthetic, this look, this font, this whatever.
00:31:32
Jason Moore
And that will help you create better images with AI just by using references. i don't It's not about copying the design so much as it is kind of copying the essence of it. Like, why does what makes this inspiring to me? And then the AI can help you achieve something that looks, isn't that same.
00:31:50
Jason Moore
you know, in that same vein.
00:31:53
Ken Freire
Jason, for for you, as you were talking about earlier with social media growing and that's helping you grow your business, ae just to be clarify, are you using primarily LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram? What's like the social media platform that you're doubling down on right now?
00:32:08
Jason Moore
For me, I have had the most success using Facebook. I know that's not everybody's platform. I have a LinkedIn account that I occasionally look at, but it's not my thing. I think it'd probably be smart for me to spend more time there, but it's not my... and Facebook comes natural to me.
00:32:26
Jason Moore
I have Instagram. I have TikTok. Instagram. i I have a YouTube account that I don't ever do anything with that I should. i mean, at this point, I'm growing like wildfire on Facebook and and I really need to translate that over to YouTube. So that's one of my goals for this year is to start to to have more presence on other platforms. But I found that for me, Facebook is, for my clientele and all that, I get a lot of speaking engagement opportunities out of it. People will see I'm out, I'm doing something, hey, will you come do this for us or whatever. I use it pretty organically, but also strategically as far as like the content that I'm posting. And it's easier, I i have found it's easier to get people to pass videos and stuff around that I'm doing on Facebook than it is TikTok and Facebook.
00:33:21
Jason Moore
And YouTube and that kind of thing. So.
00:33:23
Ken Freire
Yeah, that's great. Jason, I want to wrap up our time here with the expert-led business trend report that I talked to you about right before we hit record. These are the same five questions I've been asking. And hopefully for those who are listening to this, they're like, oh my gosh, Jason is a wealth of knowledge.
00:33:39
Ken Freire
Because of your background, I would encourage everyone to go follow Jason and we'll put all of that stuff in the show notes and you get to hear it at the end of the best way to connect with him. but I wanna see what's working and what's not working for you right now. So here are the five questions very quickly that I'm gonna ask you.
00:33:56
Ken Freire
Question number one is what's something in your business you're experimenting with right now?
00:34:02
Jason Moore
Definitely experimenting with content creation and just trying to figure out what what hits and what doesn't. So but I would say reels. I'm doing a lot with reels these days.
00:34:14
Ken Freire
I love it. I love it. Question number two, which part of your business feels the most influx or kind of keeps you up at night?
00:34:21
Jason Moore
Well, I am not a good salesperson. I hate that part with a passion.
00:34:25
Ken Freire
Yeah, you're you're not alone.
00:34:27
Jason Moore
So i I'm confident in my work. i I'm great at delivering on a deadline. i just am not, I don't like the sales part of what I do.
00:34:40
Jason Moore
Yes.
00:34:40
Ken Freire
so
00:34:41
Jason Moore
Well, I had a sales guy for a while. I mean, I had a partner that was a sales guy and he he was great at it. And he fielded all that stuff while I did all the work. I mean, I did all the kind of creative work, but I haven't found another person like that.
00:34:56
Jason Moore
And we he we ended up going separate ways amicably and all that. But yeah, I need a good salesman in my life.
00:35:02
Ken Freire
yeah Sounds good. I have a list for you.
00:35:06
Jason Moore
second
00:35:06
Ken Freire
Question number three. what's What's a goal you're building toward this year that you're really excited about?
00:35:14
Jason Moore
Again, a goal that I'm working toward is just mastery of AI tools. And in my particular genre, like I'm trying to be known for and and really excel at at media creation, videos, graphics, and that kind of thing. So my goal is to master the tools.
00:35:37
Ken Freire
Sweet. Question number four, which where do you see the industry shifting? And for you, you're in several industries, but a lot of the media industry shifting and how are you preparing for it?
00:35:50
Jason Moore
Uh, well, I think we're all afraid that AI is going to take our job. And as a content creator, as a media graphic artist, I'm certainly, a little nervous, but I think, uh, for me, what I'm doing to kind of get past that is to, if I, if I'm concerned that people are going to go to AI rather than come to me, then I want to be the guy that they go, uh, go to, to, to learn about AI. So I'm trying to get out on the front end of,
00:36:18
Jason Moore
I think your your listeners, if you lean into how AI can be used in whatever business that you're in and become the expert on that, then even if AI becomes a thing people are going to, they're going to need somebody to help them learn how to do it. And if that becomes you, then you're you're good to go.
00:36:36
Ken Freire
Last question. What's the legacy you want to leave behind?
00:36:40
Jason Moore
I hope that at the end of the day, people, i it's kind of a two-part thing or or maybe even a three-part thing. Number one, probably least important, but I love to entertain people. So I hope that people at the end of the day say, he made me laugh or he made me think or i I got a lot out of his content. Second thing is that I really want to help people, again, tell their story. so i hope that when people remember me or whatever they say, he really helped me get clarity on on how to how to tell my story and and make a difference.
00:37:17
Jason Moore
And I think the third thing is that I really take pride in the quality of my work. So I hope that when people see what I do, whether they even agree with the content, they can say that was really well done. Like he really cares about what he's doing or he puts out you know good good good content. So Those are, I think the three things.
00:37:39
Ken Freire
That's awesome, man. Jason, for those who would love to connect with you and just like learn either learn more or be like, I really could use Jason in my life to build some stuff. What's the best way to connect?
00:37:50
Jason Moore
Uh, they can, uh, if people want to connect via email, my email is mail, M a I L at midnight oil productions.com. It's long, but a midnight oil was taken by the Australian rock band from the eighties.
00:38:03
Jason Moore
So mail at midnight oil productions.com. currently have a website in development that's way long overdue, but midnightoilproductions.com is my website. There's a form there you can fill out to to get with me. And if you want to follow me on social media, i am at midnightoilprod. They don't let you go all the way to production, so at midnightoilprod.
00:38:26
Jason Moore
And then on Facebook, if you want to connect on Facebook or follow me there, This is a little silly, but it's facebook.com forward slash rubber poultry, like rubber chicken.
00:38:36
Jason Moore
But I thought rubber poultry was funnier and it's never taken.
00:38:39
Jason Moore
So, uh, no productions.com. I'm sorry. Facebook.com forward slash rubber poultry. You'll find me there and all of my wacky creations.
00:38:50
Ken Freire
That's fantastic. I wish I would've started with that to begin with. It would've been a fun little nugget.
00:38:54
Jason Moore
There you go. Well, back back in the day when I first started going into chat rooms and things in the early days of the internet, rubber chicken was always taken. And I like to be funny. And I thought, you know what's funnier than rubber poultry or rubber chicken?
00:39:07
Jason Moore
Rubber poultry. And nobody's ever used that as a as a handle. so
00:39:11
Ken Freire
That's awesome. So for those of you who are listening, if you want to go check out Jason and all his and antics, go to facebook.com forward slash rubber poultry. Hope you guys have a great day.
00:39:19
Jason Moore
There you go.
00:39:20
Ken Freire
God bless.