Why AI Won't Replace Video Marketers | Atiba de Souza

Will AI make you obsolete in video marketing?

Atiba de Souza “The Video Content Superman” says otherwise. 

As the CEO of Client Attraction Pros, Atiba has become the go-to expert for video SEO and content strategy. He's known for skyrocketing your visibility and attracting leads through video marketing.

In this interview, Atiba breaks down his approach to creating content that ranks, why community is the future of marketing, and how to build trust with your audience in an age of AI-generated content.

Don’t want to lose to robots?

Watch this episode.

Follow Atiba de Souza at:

https://www.facebook.com/atibadesouza
https://www.instagram.com/atibadesouza/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/atibadesouza/
https://clientattractionpros.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@AtibadeSouza

Follow Ken Okazaki at: 

https://www.instagram.com/kenokazaki/
https://www.youtube.com/c/KenOkazaki
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-content-capitalists-with-ken-okazaki/id1634328251
https://open.spotify.com/show/09IzKghscecbI7jPDVBJTw

Content Capitalists YouTube 

Transcript

Atiba: AI is going to make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. Those of us who are able to create, to think, able to ask great questions, are going to realize, oh my gosh, I now have time back. I can now do better than I was doing before. Atiba D'Souza, the founder of Client Attraction Pros and a pioneer in video SEO.

He's an expert in helping businesses rank higher on YouTube and Google. He's known in the digital marketing industry for skyrocketing your presence online. Community is the future of marketing and business. If community is going to be the future, putting something artificial on the front end of that sets the entire thing up to be a bad domino effect.

Is there a place for AI video? Absolutely. Can it speed up your process? Absolutely. Should it replace you on camera? I don't think so. So is there any part of you that feels threatened by this?

Content Capitalist Podcast

Ken Okazaki: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist podcast. I got a guest with me today and. He's the CEO and founder of Client Attraction Pros, and he's, like become the ambassador and expert at video SEO. That's something I want to discover a little bit more about today. And, his name is Atiba D'Souza.

Welcome to the Content Capitalists. 

Atiba: Ken, my friend. I'm glad that we finally get to do this, buddy. 

Ken Okazaki: I am too. I am too. We've been running into each other in Vegas, in, uh, Where else was it? San Diego. Um, I think Dallas. Houston maybe. Were you there? Yeah. Dallas, Dallas. That's where it was. Yeah. Yeah. 

Atiba: We run into each other all the time.

Ken Okazaki: I mean, we both kind of have like video marketing as our tagline somewhere. So yeah, it makes sense. We end up in the same places. Now you have this label video content Superman. And, why don't we talk a bit about that? And the truth is I've been looking through your social media videos of you. And I know that recently there was, Something with YouTube that, was unexpected and surprising as algorithms can be sometimes and we're going to talk about that a little bit later too.

but first let me address the elephant in the room because this happens to me too People look me up and they're like, Ken, how can I expect you to help me with video marketing when you only have like, you know, two figures, three figures on your video count and stuff? So here's the question.

How do you make a lot of money with so few views? And, What's your philosophy on that? 

Atiba: Great question. And I was just earlier today, we were, before we started talking about how many meetings we had today, right? one of them was with a potential client, needs a doctor. and we were talking about that. We were talking about the, this word called virality.

and going viral. Right? And the fact that so many people want to say, Oh my gosh, I want the big channel with all the views and so on and so forth. But the thing that you're selling, if there are only 5, 000 people in the world who can buy it, if there are only 1000 people in the world who are searching for it this month, Your definition of viral is very different than that person who created the cute cat video.

And that's the thing that's the key. It's about the addressable market. And are you reaching your addressable market? So yeah, you can say, Oh, you don't have tons and tons of views. Yeah, but I've got the right views. I've got the views from the people who actually want to do business with me. And that's the views I care about.

Those are the views that make the dollar signs happen in the bank accounts. Those are the only things that matter, because I've called the mortgage company, Ken, and tried to pay the mortgage with likes. It doesn't work. 

Ken Okazaki: Right? So. I think that'll be a funny video you should make. You should literally call your mortgage company and record it.

That, that might actually, you know what, I'm going to do it for you, that you go for it. It's going to be a race, y'all. That would be a good video. It would, it would, like, you know, like Billie Jean style, you know, like, 

Atiba: yes, 

Ken Okazaki: turn that into an ad. 

Atiba: The thing about it is people think you can, and people think that likes make money.

Ken Okazaki: They think you can, because you haven't demonstrated yet, like on a live call that you can't, so that's why you have to do it. 

Atiba: That's why we got to do it. All right. So, let's do it. And we, you know what? I'm in the U. S. You're in Japan. We will show that no matter where you are in the world, it doesn't.

Ken Okazaki: I'll go to McDonald's and try it, see if they'll even give me like a, you know, a hamburger, for likes. I don't know. 

Atiba: Yeah. Can you walk into a McDonald's and say, Hey, this is me on, on Instagram. I'm, I'm super famous. Can I get a, a hamburger for free? 

Ken Okazaki: I 

Atiba: think 

Ken Okazaki: some influencers try that, you know, they literally did.

Atiba: I, you, do you remember they went viral where there's, I think there was some hotel or Airbnb. And they're getting bullied by these influencers. And then they just posted that email online and people were just like, who the heck did these entitled influencers think they are? And that's not the business that you're in.

I don't think, right. I think you who are listening to Ken and I right now, you're in business to actually make real money. And if that's the case, then you've got to look at the content that you're creating and you have to define that addressable market, who are you serving? And how many people are there in that market?

To understand your potential reach. Cause that's the thing you need to care about. 

Ken Okazaki: You know, Seth Godin, he put out something maybe about a month ago where he got the statistics on how much money full time influencers are making. and the average full time influencer, the average, you know, those who define themselves as full time was something like two hundred and thirty dollars or something.

I have to double check that. you And that seems really low. And then he says, well, what about people who are, may have at least a hundred thousand followers, you know, online and above? So this is a hundred all the way up to, the tens of millions, right? And the average among them was just shy of 2, 000 if I remember correctly.

So I think that goes to demonstrate that you could choose to have a small audience and a big income or a big audience, small income. There's, of course, people doing it right. And I think that the difference is that when you own a product or a piece of a company, then, and you are an influencer, then you're now a business owner that does social media marketing instead of an influencer who's getting paid, but they don't own a piece of the business, right?

You know, it's just like, hey, I'll hire you to work, per hour, you're trading time for money, which is literally what they're doing. They're trading audience for money, but only for short periods of time, names that come to mind are like Paul Logan, right? He owns a piece of Prime. Boom.

You know, doing really well. You know, we got, uh, Jimmy Donaldson with Beast, uh, Feastables, right? a lot of those kind of ideas. The Kardashians with their, you know, with their makeup lines, they actually own it. So, they're business people playing influencer. Even though people Just think of them as influencers.

No, they're business men playing influencer, not influencers playing businessmen. 

Atiba: Exactly. And that's where the money is. I have a, a friend of mine who I won't say his name, but he does have a very large channel, in the sports arena. Matter of fact, in his particular arena, he's the number one channel.

and their channel is all about getting views and making money off of the algorithm. And I remember about a year ago having a conversation with him and he said, This was the worst decision I've made because some months we do 200, 000 and other months we do 60, 000 and then other months we do 30, 000.

30, 

Ken Okazaki: 000 or 30, 000? Yes, 

Atiba: 30, 000. Now, you may stop and say, that's great for him and he's making lots of money, but the variance between 200, 000 and 30, 000 is a lot. And there's no predictability in his business. And he is an outlier. He's not what Seth Godin proved to be the rule. 

Ken Okazaki: He's at the, like, the 01%.

Atiba: Right. Even the ones who are doing really good, they're still suffering. 

Ken Okazaki: If my business fluctuated like that,I wouldn't know if I could, you know, I couldn't pay payroll some months. Like, what do you do? 

Atiba: You can't. And, and that's the way he was. And he's like, I don't, we can't grow. We can't shrink. We can't do anything.

Because we don't know what's going to happen next. Every month is different because we're wholly reliant on the algorithm. 

Ken Okazaki: Tommy, what is video SEO? Walk me through that. 

Atiba: So video SEO is the art and the science of getting your video found either on YouTube or, on Google. Now, most people, when they talk about video SEO, they're only talking about YouTube.

And to me, they're missing a major, major boat. Like yes, getting found in YouTube is important and YouTube search is great, but YouTube has so many different ways that they show videos to people. And when someone, especially if you're selling a product or a service, when someone has a problem, That your business product service solves, what they do is they go to Google and search for a solution and that's where you want your video.

And so what we do there and in Video SEO is figure out how to take videos that rank or that are on YouTube and get them to rank. And Google. 

So how do you get a YouTube video to rank on Google? 

One of the beautiful things here, Kandis, I share everything that we do.

Okay. I'm gonna tell you the way it's done. and that's just the way I am. Okay. So number one, when you're looking at getting a video to rank on in Google, the first thing you've got to do is be completely obsessed with the audience. Okay. You've got to understand, know your audience, be in love with your audience, know what your audience loves, what they hate, what causes them pain, what causes them to move, what problems they're having.

You've got to know all of that stuff because Google does. Okay. And Google also understands that this is the pain that they're in and what they're going to search for. And you can actually go to Google and figure out what are people searching for, as we all know, keywords and so on and so forth. And so we teach people how to go find the actual questions that their audience is putting inside of Google.

Once you have that information, you create the videos that answer those specific questions. One question per video. You're going to post that video on YouTube. The title of the video is going to be the question. Don't change it exactly as it was in Google. That's the title of the video. In the description, first two sentences of the description, repeat the question in the rest of the description.

and Ken, you've probably heard this, um, people talk about this and this is some of the worst advice that people give. There are lots of experts who say the description of your YouTube video should entice someone to watch the video. Ken, when was the last time you read a description before you watched the video?

Ken Okazaki: Just the first couple of lines, maybe in the preview. 

Atiba: Yeah,but that's it. You're not reading the whole thing. It's not happening. Right? And so the description, put in the description, what your video is about. Talk. If you made five points, make them in the description, tell what those five points were. Why are they important?

Because Google is reading it. Okay. then also in your description, add chapters and descriptive chapters. you know, we're in the video industry and so I was buying a new camera. And when you go buy a new camera, you go watch reviews. And so I found a review from a guy I wanted to watch. He was reviewing 10 cameras, Ken, all in the same class.

So I wanted to watch, but I wanted to see the one that I wanted.And so I went and he started and I realized he's doing doing 10. So I went to the description to get the chapter for my camera, the camera that I wanted to see. And he had his chapters listed as video one, uh, sorry, camera one, camera two, camera three, but not which camera was which. 

Completely pointless use of chapters. So when you do your chapters, make them descriptive, Okay. And then lastly, YouTube has the ability to auto transcribe your video. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever use that feature ever. YouTube themselves will tell you I auto transcribe about 60 to 70 percent accurate.

And you don't get to choose which 30 percent it gets wrong. And so if it gets wrong, you can't go and edit it. You can, you can, but it's not the greatest of editors. 

Ken Okazaki: Okay. So I'm going to tell you what we've been doing. Um, yeah. and then you tell me how close we got. Okay. Like there's a couple services.

We use Descript, but recently found that CapCut actually does an even better job of recognizing words in Descript. Okay. We just load up the CapCut, download the SRT, then port it over and upload it to YouTube. But what do you do? So we use both. We use CapCut 

Atiba: and Descript as 

Ken Okazaki: well. They're good, right? 

Atiba: Yes.

The voice recognition 

Ken Okazaki: is amazing. 

Atiba: they're great for what they do. we use Descript for a lot because we're cutting stuff up, and we may want to make changes, cleaning up the filler words and that type of thing in terms of cleaning the video. Um, so we use Descript a lot for that.

the shorts and that type of content all gets processed through CapCut. So we'll actually cut the video. Coming out of Descript. So we'll find the sections, let Descript cut it, and then import into CapCut and let CapCut do its thing. so yeah, we use both. So, spot on, buddy. 

Ken Okazaki: Very cool. Let me ask you this question.

What's the biggest reason why you'd pick a different platform? We got YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, you name it. Videos everywhere. And, but you seem to be talking a lot about YouTube. So tell me why. What are the merits and demerits of each one? 

Atiba: The reason is because of Google. Because Google is the biggest search intent engine in the world.

flat out, people go to Google to search, to find what they need. And Google has decided they want to put more videos on page one.And where are they going to go first? The property that they own. Will they go to other places? Yes, because we have gotten, we've posted videos on TikTok and gotten them to rank.

On page one of Google. We figured that out too, but that's a lot harder to do than to get a YouTube video to rank on page one of Google. So what we tell everybody is we are video first, YouTube first, okay? All content goes to YouTube first. Then the platform where your ideal audience is. So if your ideal audience is on LinkedIn, go to send it to YouTube first, then format it for LinkedIn if.

You've got an audience that's on TikTok, send it to YouTube first, then to TikTok. 

Ken Okazaki: tell me then, what's the problem thatcustomers or clients think they have when they come to you? And then once you get working with them, do you realize is usually the real problem? It's a great question, 

Atiba: man. I haven't had that question in a long time.

Thanks, Ken. Um, it's a good one. So the problem that most people think that they have is they think they have a sales problem. They think they have a leads problem. Um, either usually we're not getting enough and we want more. And the real problem typically is no, the ones you were getting were bad because You were targeting them wrong because your content was poor.

That was getting, bringing them in the door. And so at the point of fixing their content and cleaning it up, it then starts to perform. 

Ken Okazaki: So when he say fixing and cleaning up pretty much that's what you described earlier. 

Atiba: Right? Now more than that, now we get into the content strategy side of it. Right. And how you actually look at the content because you can take one question.

One problem that someone has, and then you have to consider where are they in the buyer's journey, because just because they search for something doesn't mean they're ready to buy today. And so you have to, and this is what we help our clients with is to create the content that maps to their buyer's journey so that the content finds the person at the right time.

Then when it finds the person at the right time, it then suggests the next video in the series. To keep them moving along the journey, right? Everything we do is about, and I know you know this, but everything we do is about pre framing. We want to pre frame the client so that by the time they show up to your door, they have credit card in hand.

They're ready to go because they've already made the buying decision. That's the purpose of creating great content. 

Ken Okazaki: That makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Let me read something to you here. You're speaking at a digital marketer. And, uh, here's what she said, anytime you're communicating with anyone, you're marketing something, you're marketing yourself, you're marketing, whatever you're saying, and it's that art of communication and learning to really connect.

Let's talk about that. Like, is there no off switch for 

Atiba: you? 

Ken Okazaki: No, 

Atiba: there isn't. So I practice communication everywhere. Whether that's, I do a lot of walking and I walk in my neighborhood and you pass people, I'll communicate. People hate going out with me because I'm going to talk to everybody. 

Ken Okazaki: Sounds like my kids.

Atiba: Dad, don't talk to them. Dad, dad. How about your kids? They do that? Well, so here's the funny story. So my wife just went to Paris. She just got back from Paris with my son, and my son was there before her and she gets there and he says, Oh, I found this great restaurant. We got to go. Right. And so they go to this restaurant and they walk in and the people at the restaurant greet my son.

Hey, you're back. And you brought friends. He's been there for three days in Paris. They had a restaurant already know him. Right? And it's like, yes, because he communicated and I've been teaching my kids that. And I do that because the key here, Ken, is we all communicate with assumption, right? And it's an art form.

And every person that you get to communicate with, if you take the moment to study what just happened, you can learn a little bit about how to get your message across. And so I'm always studying. Is it like 

Ken Okazaki: a part of your DNA, your psyche, and then just the fact that you have video as a tool, it kind of came across naturally there, or was this something that you had to develop?

Did you grow up really shy and then have to learn this or were you born? greeting people, shaking hands, high fiving and all that from when you're a toddler. So 

Atiba: that's a really interesting question. Um, by nature I'm actually an introvert. I find that about a lot of marketers and 

Ken Okazaki: people who are kind of 

Atiba: flamboyant.

Yes. If left to my own devices, I will sit in the house. I don't, ken, I don't even own a car Okay. So when I'm home and I travel a lot, but when I'm home, I sit in the house. I don't go anywhere. I walk my neighborhood. That's it. So it's about as far as I go. Okay. and so, yes, I will stay to myself, but one of the things that I learned early in life was that didn't get me far when I was in public.

And so I had to show up and I had to learn to show up. And so I'm always consider studying. That art of 

Ken Okazaki: showing up. Was there a certain training? A certain person, a certain experience where you saw a drastic pivot or 

Atiba: a growth point. Yeah, there were a couple. One of the first ones happened in, um, okay. So actually, let me even go back further than that to fully answer the question.

So I'm originally from Trinidad and so we immigrated here when I was nine years old. Nine is a very tough age for a kid to leave a country. You're not fully steeped in the country you came from culturally and you're coming to a new place where you have no idea what the hell is going on. It's a very confusing time.

What's the language in Trinidad? English, right? So I didn't have that, fortunately. and so I, I left an environment where, especially in school, it was the cool thing to be the smartest kid in class. And if you weren't, you would look down on, and so you're always fighting to raise your hand in class. I left an environment where athletically I sucked.

I was the last to get picked for the teams. And when I got picked. And we started playing, they usually kicked me off the team and said, they'd rather play one man down than play with me. Then I get to this country and being the smartest kid in class, wasn't a fun thing to be. Nobody liked that kid.And so that caused me to shut up. 

Okay. But then I grew into my body and athletically I became a lot and I became the star athlete, but I still was quiet. Then ninth grade. So first it was soccer, then football. the ninth grade, I had a teacher, Mr. Bundy. I'm still a very dear friend of mine to this day. he's almost 90 years old and Mr.

Bundy gave me and another young lady every Friday in physics class in ninth grade to talk about whatever we wanted to talk about, because by that point I'd become a little militant midget, true story, right? I was, it was me against the whole world. I felt like everything was against me and he gave me the floor to talk about it.

I had to express myself in front of a group of my peers, debating against the peer where he, as a teacher, sat in the back and said nothing and just let us go. And that was the first time of really hearing and feeling other people's perspective on things, but also having to stand up and, and figure out how to communicate my voice in a way that it made sense in my head, but it wasn't making sense coming out my mouth. And how do I fix that? So that was one, that, that really changed things. That class, that man. Then parlayed through a couple other things, glad to be in a program with a woman, Karen Kalish, who became my Jewish mother and I mean, she was at my wedding and introduced herself as my Jewish mother. What does that mean, Jewish 

Ken Okazaki: mother?

I don't really understand the Jewish culture. maybe you can enlighten me and anybody else who might not. 

Atiba: And that's a whole show by itself. So a Jewish mother is very overbearing. a Jewish mother is in your business. 

Ken Okazaki: Wait, wait. So she's, she's your biological mother? No, no, no, no, she's not just a, just a person who knows you, who is a 

Atiba: mother to me and she's Jewish and she became the Jewish mother, which is a stereotypical type of overbearing, always in your stuff kind of mother, but just, um, just a woman who. So I don't mean to brag, but I was in her program. So she had a program that I got accepted into. And so she kind of took me in under her wing as her son, right? She happened to be Bill Clinton's speech coach. And so she media trained me at 17 years old. So that was a second. 

Ken Okazaki: Coincidence. Yeah. Very fortunate.

Atiba: So that was a second kind of pivotal moment where she saw, you got words to say, let's help you save them and let's help you figure out how. 

Ken Okazaki: What's the one most important thing that you feel that you remember she taught you that might transfer to our listeners here? 

So much credit is going to your, these people who touched you at a young age. And that's amazing. And I think that as adults, you know, I'm, I'm 44, you're probably a similar age. And I think we have to realize we're missing opportunities to do this for others. Every single day in somebody else's world, we're either hitting it or we're missing it.

And I think that if we think like that, then And we listened and we'd think back more on the people who helped us when we were just kids, you know, we'd pay more attention to them than what's around us who, who looked like they're not interested and they got their heads down on their phones. They got their, you know, noise canceling earphones on, pretend they can't hear you all that, but, 

Atiba: I think we can and we should.

We should. and we need to, um, and that's why I coach for a lot of years too, which is a whole nother story. Here's one of the things that Karen, taught me and all of us in the program, but, um, I know we had opportunities like one on one really direct. So not only does she media train us, but then we got opportunities to speak in front of two to 3, 000 people at 17 years old. 

Okay. And give speeches in front of large audiences, uh, some small. But a lot of large, and we might have a 30 minute, a 15 minute, a 25 minute slot. And Karen would never let us get on stage with more than a note card with three to four words written on it. One of the things that with my clients that we have to help them with a lot is recognizing, you know, your stuff, like, you're so nervous to be on camera.

You're so nervous to talk in front of a room and, but you know, your stuff. And if you know your stuff, get there and be you and let that come out and it will come out well. That's the big thing. So like, I don't use teleprompters. I don't use notes, anything when I speak. That's pretty cool. 

Ken Okazaki: That's pretty cool.

I found, uh, because we make videos a lot of times that turn into ads and a lot of them, seven figures of, you know, ad spend get put behind them. And there's a noticeable conversion difference between people who memorize or read scripts versus people who kind of just use a basic framework and let their intuition guide them through the framework.

They'll do it multiple times, but then they'll know when they nailed it, but it'll never be the same as reading or memorizing. And it's completely different. People connect differently. Yeah, I do use a teleprompter actually. Right now I'm using one so I can look right in your eyes and the camera simultaneously, not to read scripts.

I do it so that I can look at you and I don't have to look down here. You know, if your face was here and I'm doing this, you know, that would just be awkward. I just want to look at you, see the smile, see your reactions, see how we're doing and the nice branding on your, on your, on your hat, all that. Let me ask you about something here.

Here's something that you, I was published in SpeakerHub. Okay, here's what you said. You know what's coming. You've seen and heard the hype. And now you're wondering, how can I revolutionize my marketing game with the power of artificial intelligence? I'm here to teach you how. Let's talk about that. I've seen recently on my birthday, which was April 27, just a couple of weeks ago.

We're May 10th today for those who are, wondering. And, When I walked in, they had this big surprise. Like they totally, totally owned me. I was not expecting it. My wife had taken me out and it was like a great experience. Uh, you know, we went for some to a beautiful park and a few other surprises and we came back and it was the end of the day.

I was, and I literally, as I walked in the door, I said, Oh, I'm ready for a nap and I'm going up the stairs. And then there's like a ton of people ambushed me. Boom, happy birthday. Right? Great. And then they, as I walked in, they're playing this rap song on the speakers. And it was a birthday song to me and it was like really well done.

I was just like, guys, that was great. And later on, I was just like, hope you didn't, you know, spend too much money on the rap song. I was like, no, no, no. We just went to this site called Soya and we just put in a few lines about you and this came out. I'm just like, holy effing crap. I went and checked out the site.

And so we're seeing things like Sora. ai, right? We're seeing things like, you know, ChatGBD. That was for written. We've got. you know, voice, music, video. Twelve months from now, I think that everything, the video, the editing, the planning, the copywriting, all of that will be able to be completed in a one stop shop solution.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some people already have early versions of that running. So let's talk about that video marketing. and AI. what's the deal? And what are your thoughts? 

Atiba: So, I have lots of thoughts on this, to be completely honest. So number one, and I'll just say this, we're about to launch some new campaigns as well for, our DIY product, and they're going to be AI generated video ads. 

We're going to test and see how it works. so I'm curious about that. on that side, on the other side, there is a, in the organic world and creating video, especially when we're talking about you who have a high ticket product or service that you sell, where you're connected to it. And people know you're connected to it. It's very hard to use AI to generate your own video there. At this point. Heck, even 12 months from now, I would shy away from it because exactly what we talked about a little bit earlier, people can intrinsically tell when it's just a script, 15 second ad, maybe they didn't notice 10 minute video. Yeah, they're going to notice people are still going to want to connect with you.

And so this is the interesting conversions, Ken, that's going to happen. So let's call a spade a spade here in the U S the last eight years or so have been a crap show. Doesn't matter. What side of the political fence you're on, no one's happy. Okay. And what's happened in the public is the public has gotten to the place where we're suspicious of big brother.

We're suspicious of big company. We want to connect with real people. So 12 months from now, when it becomes, and I had this conversation at Traffic and Conversion with a doctor, when he was just like, why do I need to get on camera? I'm just going to create. AI videos, like, but your patients actually want to connect with you.

And I don't see that going away anytime soon because of the experience that we've had in the last eight or so years. Community is the future of marketing and business.Okay. If community is going to be the future, which we can talk about too, putting something artificial on the front end of that sets the entire thing up.

To be a bad domino effect. That's my opinion. Is there a place for AI video? Absolutely. Is there a place for AI to help you in what you generate in terms of the research that you're doing, the scripts that you're writing, that the scene selection, absolutely. Can it speed up your process? Absolutely.

Should it replace you on camera? don't think so. 

Ken Okazaki: I'll just say that now I know let's just remember where we were five years ago with technology. I think that you and me, at least myself, I won't put words in your mouth. I would not have thought it's possible what Sora is doing right now.

What, these, you know, what's chat GPT, what, Claude. What they're doing now. If someone said in five years, it's going to be this good, It would have been like a moonshot, like, okay, maybe 5 percent chance that that's going to happen. So taking that into consideration five years from now, what do we struggle to believe is possible with AI, and are we too arrogant to believe that it can't replace us? 

Because let's call a spade, a spade, like you said, Our entire businesses are set up on helping people to connect with businesses, to connect with customers using a medium called video and social media. And AI could do the research faster,potentially better. AI could impersonate humans. AI can, with the voice, the visuals, the chapters, finding the questions that people are asking on Google, you know, editing, posting. So is there any part of you that feels threatened by this? Or not? 

Atiba: No, not threatened. I've been in the search industry since 1996. Lots has changed. Lots has changed. And so one of the things for me is always, as it changes, we change. I knew video was coming since 2017. As the future, right?

And we made changes because we were all written before. And so I don't see where it's going just yet either. And it's hard, especially the space that it's going, it's hard to somewhat predict, but you're also absolutely right. I could be completely wrong. And vid, AI generated video becomes the way of the future.

My challenge there is it puts consumers in a pickle. Because now, how do I know what to trust? And that's always the key. People buy from those who they trust. And so if we can always figure out what it takes for someone to trust you,we'll know where the market is going. We see where the trust meter moves.

We'll know, because if they don't trust you, they won't buy. Right now, that trust is in exactly what we're doing here. That connection. Being able to look at each other and feel each other's energy. Part of the reason why that's so big right now is because of what the last eight years were. Maybe the next five change that and 

Ken Okazaki: we'll move with it.

Ken Okazaki: Do you think that there needs to be potentially government regulation that forces people to watermark things? or maybe there's a new technology that's going to be another layer on top that will automatically tell you if this is AI or human? or something like that to restore trust and that kind of thing.

Is that what you see potentially happening? 

Atiba: So one, no to government oversight. the challenge with government oversight is government oversight is always controlled by money in some way, shape or form. Right. And so, yeah, I'm not for that. Um, it's kind of like when they say, Oh, it's, it's fat free, but that just means it's 92 percent fat free or whatever it is.

free range chicken. Oh, they have 18 inches to run in. That's not free range. Like, it's not real. So I don't trust on that side. Okay. so the thing with the Detection. And what is the tool? Oh my gosh. I forgot this tool now, Ken. There's a, there's one of the original AI tools that's been around for a long, you know, before GPT, was around and it was doing, more of that 

Ken Okazaki: one.

Atiba: No, not Jasper. So it wasn't doing generative. It was doing more of the spell check, the grammar check, that type of thing. I forget which one it is now. It wasn't, it's a, it's a competitor to Grammarly. I just heard and just saw. that they have where you can take text and paste it in and it will tell you, was it AI generated?

Was it human generated? And AI edited? Was it AI generated and human edited? And a whole bunch of permutations. That's nice to your, are there tools or watermarks, whatever to tell you, but then somebody is going to beat it. 

Ken Okazaki: Yeah. You know how you beat it? Cause I've done this. You literally, in the prompt to generate the text, you say, compose it and ensure that it gets an 80 percent or higher score as human written and run through an AI detector and it, the, and then it'll do that for you.

So it'll put all the, the foibles and the errors and stuff in. And it'll kind of, you know, make the structure more humanlike. it's just that easy to just add one line of instruction. So I guess as it unfolds we'll see, you know, we'll just roll with the punches and see what happens.

For me. I love it. I really love it. And the way I see it, it's just like, let's just, cause I've got a team of creatives and they're editing video and I, when we started, we were like, literally Like pausing the video, you know, listening to what they said, typing out the subtitles. Do you remember doing that?

Yes. Yes. And that was, 90 percent of the editing time. I don't know if you're old enough. I mean, I think you're older than me or about the same age, about the same age. I'm a couple of years older than you. A couple of years old. Okay. I remember editing on, on tapes, you know, there's literally, People don't know what, why B roll is called B roll.

It's just like, no, there's a reel and that's B and there's an A roll. I come from way back there. And I remember when video creation editing. was like, picking wheat by hand in the fields. And then, so what you need is like, I don't know anything about farming, but let's just say you need like, you know, 30 workers per acre, to harvest a field.

Maybe, I don't know. Now you need one person with a big ass machine that says, you know, mow it all down. So I feel like I just supercharged my team and instead of the team being replaced, Their capacity increased, as long as they adopted alert to use of machinery. 

Atiba: I've also said this from a digital marketer stage, okay?

AI is going to make smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. And what I mean by that is, those of us who are able to create, those of us who are able to, to, to think, those of us who are able to ask great questions. are going to realize, Oh my gosh, I now have time back. I can now do better than I was doing before. 

Right? So what I used to think was a hundred percent is now 40 percent and I could take it even further and make things even better. And that is so much of the power of the efficiencies that AI brings to us. So like you, I am also excited. Absolutely. And I love playing with the tools. 

Ken Okazaki: Got to wrap this up soon, but I got to bring this thing full circle.

In the beginning,I let it slip that something happened on YouTube with you recently. Could you walk us through that? and I think that right now, from what I can tell, it's not sorted out yet, but I think that this is going to happen to everybody running a business online at some point. Uh, algorithms get twitchy.

You're, you know, what happens a lot actually is your competitors,sometimes they know how to game the system. To do things to get your account banned. Competitors, or, there's actually agencies that competitors can hire. Hope. I'm not giving anyone ideas, but sometimes you get banned because of malicious intent, which is awful.

Which is awful. But how are you handling this? Like, how did it affect your business and what's your game plan in this situation? And then you could gimme an update once, uh, there's some kind of resolution one way or the other. And then we'll, uh, you know, we'll follow up. 

Atiba: So what Ken's referring to is, one of my main, it was actually my second oldest YouTube channel.

so they call me the video content Superman. So I've got a, I've got channels and my channel's got tons of content on it. And, couple of weeks ago, about two and a half, almost three weeks ago. Now I get an email from YouTube early one morning. your account has been banned for violation of community guidelines.

Huh? Okay. Appeal process. Appeal? It will take probably 24 hours for us to respond. 10 minutes later. Appeal denied. What's your recourse? Nothing. BB you've violated and I think the document's something like 45 pages and it says you violated something in here. That's as much specificity as they give you.

Ken Okazaki: They don't point to a specific piece of media or anything. No, nothing. They tell you nothing and you can't go and see your videos either, can you? Like no. 'cause they've snatched everything. You cannot access the channel. So you can't go 

Atiba: and download your files either. You cannot download it. you've lost complete access to everything.

We're a little bit inattentive, so we have everything and backups of everything for years. So from that perspective, we haven't lost the actual data, right? We just, we lost the channel. When that happened, I was initially pissed off, flabbergasted even. And then I stopped and I had to be honest with myself.

I took a walk around my neighborhood. Um, and I had to be honest with myself. And I realized with this channel, I had stopped taking my own advice that I give to all of our clients, which is never rely on rented traffic. Anytime you're on somebody else's network, you're on rented traffic. You're borrowing their traffic.

Your goal always is to get that traffic that is supposed to be with you off of that channel onto owned traffic. And I realized. I had actually been failing at doing that and I said, well, that sucks. And in that moment I decided, and then this is, this is one of my philosophies too, in case y'all haven't been able to tell in the way I look at things and situations, every obstacle is just a speed bump on your way to success.

And so this was an obstacle. Right at that point in time, we're looking at our, we're also launching our done with you, service now done with you service is my entire system packaged up for you of how to start and how to grow. And I lost my channel and it hit me on that walk. Perfect. Perfect. I'm going to rebuild the whole thing and let everybody watch me do it. 

And so that's what I'm doing, and I want to let everybody in, thank you, let everybody in, in, so that you can see it, we're going to talk about how, who's my audience, why am I choosing that audience? How do you build an idle customer profile? Right? How do you build a newsletter? So you can actually start to collect those names and email addresses or what, however else you want to actually get to own traffic.

Why I chose the, this method to do it, right? Why I haven't created content or the channel yet, because I'm still doing the work of re identifying the customer, understanding their pain points. Don't just run out there creating crap just because. Have a plan, have a strategy. Here's how it maps out. Here's how we do it.

And I'm going to let everybody watch me do it. I've also said, I think this might be the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. 

Ken Okazaki: You know, I, I got to dig a little bit deeper, a little bit, because you said that this is an older channel and there's probably stuff that's been up there years ago.

And I'm guessing that you have some vague idea in your mind of something that might've been in there. Somebody watching. got really triggered about and then reported it. Maybe it was said years ago or out of context and then now it would feel more bad in 2024 than whenever it was recorded.

I'm going to accept that you don't know what it is. What's the closest thing that is in there that could have been 

Atiba: the trigger? So this is a channel where we talk about thoughts on thought leadership. And so I'm talking about how to get on. stages and be a thought leader. You're talking about earning money.

We did talk about earning money, but, but as a by product of actually being a great thought leader, right? 

Ken Okazaki: Any specific names that you mentioned maybe that, that, that person got pissed off about? Not that I can think of. All right. I'm going to, you know, it's a real head scratcher, isn't it? 

Atiba: It is. And that's also part of the challenge when you are borrowing other people's traffic.

Okay. Is you don't know the moment in time. And in this case, there is no human behind it. It was all algorithmic. 

Ken Okazaki: Even the appeal, you think, was algorithmic? 10 minutes? I think it was. So that button is just a joke then, isn't it? The algorithm banned you, and you're gonna ask the algorithm again. And they're gonna run the same algorithm.

Atiba: And say, you're done. And they don't tell you why. Right? Um, and so, so yeah, so, so again, I, I don't know what it was and, and it is frustrating because, you know, we went to the team and the team was pissed off and, and the team's like, well, how do we know we're not going to do it again? If we don't know. And, and that's also part of it is like, if you don't tell me what I did wrong, when I don't think I did anything wrong.

And so it is what it is. 

Ken Okazaki: So what's the alternative? You said the mistake you made was relying on other people's platforms. 

Atiba: We are going to rely on other people's platforms and we are going to rely on other people's, traffic. But the goal is to get that traffic off of that platform and into an old list, i.

Ken Okazaki: e. your email. It's beautiful, isn't it, how email is like the OG of, internet communication. And it's the only thing that you can literally own is someone's email address. and you could print it out. You could download it onto a USB drive, take it with you to another country. The same with phone numbers, phone numbers, emails, everything else is, uh.

Somebody else's 

Atiba: yeah. Somebody else's right. And. When you're relying there. you're stuck and you're screwed. You are. And we tell our clients this all the time. We tell people this all the time. and all with this channel, I wasn't taking my own advice. Real talk. I think 

Ken Okazaki: it's happened. Happened to me too.

Haven't taken my own advice. If you were to come across somebody who is struggling with video content creation, struggling with getting ranked on YouTube, and you could just look them in the eyes and tell them a word of advice, point them in the right direction. What would 

Atiba: that be? Yeah, that's a great question.

So if you're struggling with your video content and getting ranked on YouTube, I would tell you first and foremost, that you need to go back and understand your customer. Okay. Because the chances are the content that you're creating isn't resonating with them, but how do you do that? You go to Google, Google will tell you it will.

Go do a search for whatever industry you're in about a third of the way down the page. Now, Google has a section called people also asked, it tells you the questions people are asking Google. It tells you what people want to know. You don't have to go pay big money for this y'all. Answer those questions.

Watch the results start to change. 

Ken Okazaki: Thank you so much for that. You've got all this expertise, and you must have a range of services. Somebody who's listened up until now is going to be interested in you to some degree. Could you let us know, What kind of business specifically do you help the best and in what way?

Atiba: Yeah, great. Thank you, Ken. so our done with you service is designed for you business owners who are selling high ticket services. Um, you've existed on referrals for a long time, probably word of mouth, that type of thing, you know, you need to do marketing. You're terrified to go out and spend agency money and hire an agency.

You want to do it yourself, but you need some guidance. That's exactly what we provide for you with our Done With You service. 

Ken Okazaki: That's great. And here's what I will say is I think that I love that year. All these good words. This is a simple metaphor that can be used by anyone but I didn't mean it that way but I think that the more we talk about it, the more we share and we promote each other, the bigger the pie gets.

it's not a finite resource. As long as you're educating the general audience about what's possible, the more people will come on board. The pie gets bigger as we share information, share leads. So I'd really encourage anybody listening. Do check out the links and, uh, see if it's a good fit to reach out to Ateeba and, uh, see what magic can happen between the two of you guys.

I mean, he is Superman after all, so you never know. Hey Ateeba, we've got to wrap this up. Thank you guys also for listening all the way to the end. And if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to go down to the description and, uh, check out the links where we're going to have all the different ways you can connect with Ateeba.

If, you found something interesting, please do reach out to him. Please do find out what he has to offer. And, as for. Meet myself. I'll see you next week.