#321: His EXACT System For Writing Scripts With AI — Former Ali Abdaal Scriptwriter, George Blackman

0:00Where is it worth putting my energy into learning to use AI well? And where should I deliberately take a stand and be like, no, I'm using my brain here because it's actually better to do so. Meet George Blackman. He started as a full-time script writer for Ali Abdaal. He's written scripts for creators from 30 ,000 to over 10 million subscribers. And he now teaches creators how to write their own scripts that keep people watching and turn them into paying customers. In this episode, you'll learn his exact system for writing scripts with AI, starting with the framework behind every hook he writes.

0:31For educational hooks, I always think target transformation stakes. He's also brutally honest about the ways AI lies to you in the process. You sort of learn all these little ways in which it may appear to be doing something well, and then the output that comes out, it actually reveals, oh, hang on, it wasn't doing these like 10 things that it claimed very confidently that it was. And stick around to the end where George shows me the tool he built for writing killer scripts using AI that saves you time without sacrificing your unique voice. Thank you to 1 of 10 for sponsoring this video. When somebody asks ChatGPT who are the best creators in your niche, does it say your name or does it mention your competitors instead?

1:09Because a response will only share a few names. And with LLMs, if you're not sighted, you might as well be invisible. And that's at the exact moment when someone is deciding who to follow or what to buy. The first step is finding out just how visible or invisible you are to LLMs like ChatGPT. And Ahrefs built a new tool called Brand Radar to show you where you actually stand. It tracks your mentions across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI overviews, and Copilot, and gives you an AI share of voice against your competitors. That means how often you get named when your topic comes up, and whether you're being mentioned or actually cited as a source.

1:47It's built on 481 million real prompts, making it the largest AI visibility database out there. This isn't about gaming AI. It's about finding out what of the work you're already doing, the content, the authority, and the backlinks are translating into AI visibility. Try a free preview of Ahrefs brand Radar at creatorscience.co.radar. That's creatorscience.co.radar. For decades, a shadowy organization called the Lemonati has kept lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Look around. Lemon forward sodas, even lemon forward songs. We ran the tracks, slowed them down, reversed them, and squeezed out the truth.

2:29That's lemon propaganda right there. But now, 7up is fighting back with their new lime lemon soda. Join the 7up rising. Flip the sip. As just a frame for the overall conversation, some may think that, okay, because we have AI, is that doing all of the work of script writing now? What say you? I think this is a place that everyone is now in with pretty much any industry, whether it's to do with writing specifically, whether it's coding, whether it's like anything that could feasibly be affected by AI. There is this sense of uncertainty and like, where should I put my energy right now? Should I be putting my energy into like getting really good at ideation because the script can just be written for me?

3:19Or is ideation already off the cards because AI can just do that for me? Do I even need to bother learning to code anymore because AI can just do that for me? And I think script writing is such a broad church. There are so many aspects to it that even with that, it's like, okay, sure, AI could write my whole script, but should I still be the one looking at my hook because I know the hook's super important? Or are these key moments where I call out to a product that I'm trying to sell or something in the script, are they so important that I should still be using my brain or is AI better than me?

3:47And so more broadly, like we're going to, we're going to talk about the sort of process that I use these days to write a script using AI. But I think the broader meta skill and the thing to try and figure out that I'm trying to figure out. And I think we're all trying to figure out is like, where are the parts where it's the most useful? Where is it worth putting my energy into learning to use AI well? And where should I deliberately take a stand and be like, no, I'm using my brain here, not through some like moral crusade, but because it's actually better to do so. Can you walk us through, let's imagine you are making a video for the George Blackman channel.

4:21How are you going about script writing today? First step, and this is where the use case for AI is much, much stronger. I think even just to refer back to your previous question, it's like, where are people needed? It's almost easier to list the few places where AI is definitely a no-brainer. And the first step of my process these days is very much where it is a no-brainer, which is just explaining my thoughts about the script that I want to write verbally using either like a voice note thing or just directly into Claude. Just that ability to spiel off in natural language what I think about a topic, even if it just allows me the chance to clarify my thoughts on something that I've never said out loud.

5:01Kind of the same idea as journaling or something. It allows you to just get more out than if you're just vaguely thinking about something in your head. And it's just assuming that you've already decided on the video idea, if not package. Yes, this is assuming you've already thought of the packaging or I guess yes ideally the packaging not everyone does it there's no shame if you don't come up with your packaging first although obviously try to but yes the idea is already decided at this point I guess we could talk about ideas as well but that's less where I'm involved um this is I know what I'm going to talk about maybe I don't know exactly how I want to frame it um an example from my channel specifically was like I wanted to do a video about my sort of journey in my business but I knew I needed to tie it back to YouTube script writing in some way and so I spoke out loud to an AI about this and I was like here are the the sort of points in my business when I was a script writer then I was like a consultant now I run this community and blah blah blah but what's the sort of angle that makes this interesting for my audience who cares maybe a bit about business but more about script writing and what it allowed me to do was get those thoughts out and then have some time going back and forth on the angle that we we should approach the subject.

6:09And ultimately, we kind of landed on this approach of every stage of my business, how have my thoughts about scriptwriting changed? And like, what's the key lesson about scriptwriting I learned at each revenue level or whatever, which kind of, yeah, tied it back to my audience's interests. Yeah, let's imagine that somebody watching this doesn't have any type of complex projects set up. Maybe they've never used Claude or ChatGPT to do anything like this. And so what should be the starting point? Is it just like dumping this in? Or do you think they should take some time and say like, okay, here's my audience.

6:44Here's this, here's that. Like what context does this thing need before you start talking about a particular video, if it needs its context at all? So first thing, I currently use Claude. I used to use ChatGPT. I switched to Claude because I wasn't loving ChatGPT's outputs. Since I've switched to Claude, I think it seems like ChatGPT has then And it has had a kind of resurgence at the time of recording. I think it's on 5.5 now, is it? Or is it something else? Anyway, sidetrack. I use Claude. Either one is fine, is what we're hearing. Either one is fine. Yeah, exactly. You'll probably have workable, good help using either one of these things.

7:19Yeah, exactly that. But in terms of giving the AI enough context, I think there's really like an easy route and a hard route. So the easy mode of this, I would say, is you need a style guide and you need an audience avatar. and arguably then some project instructions like telling the project what it is for that's really the the simplest thing how do you make those again it's very simple this is that meta skill again where it's like you explain to it this is what this project is I need a style guide I need an audience avatar what do you need from me so you can create those for me if that makes sense how many scripts of mine or like examples of writing or if you don't have any examples of writing you would say like can I just speak to you for five minutes about a random topic and you get my voice from that but those would be the two things that um you can just ask your LLM for help making so that's the easy mode I think the advanced mode shall we call it and this is how I start my projects these days is same thing starting a new project with um whisper flow or just you know anything that you can you can leave a voice note to and just explaining this is the task that I have before me.

8:26So I did this when I was upgrading my course. I was like, I need to upgrade my course. My course is 36 ,000 words long. Since releasing it, I have uploaded two years worth of newsletters. I want to integrate those newsletters into my course. I have X, Y, Z, other concerns. 36 ,000 words is quite long. Will you be able to handle that? Just giving it all the context that I thought it might need. And then basically saying to it, Like, what is my first step here? What do you need from me? And I think people underestimate this approach a lot because it kind of feels like, oh, I guess I need to know how to use this thing before I start using it.

9:00But the joy of it is and why it feels so kind of weirdly addictive is you can just say like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, what do I, how do I, how do I proceed? This is legitimately like what everybody is selling in the world of teaching you how to clawed, by the way. It's like, I did this thing, pay me$99 and I'll show you how I did it. and it inevitably comes back to, and then you ask it how to do it. And it will tell you. That's the entire secret of working with AI is like, just start with, I'm trying to do this thing. What do you need from me? Literally, if you counted how many times I asked my open claw, what do you need from me?

9:34It would be astronomical. Yes, yeah, 100%. And like recently building this app, I was suddenly aware like, hang on, there are probably some legal ramifications of selling a subscription thing that relates to AI. And so I just said to it, like, what are the legal ramifications? And then this enormous block of text came out and it was like, we have these 25 tasks to do. You need to contact this lawyer. You need to blah, blah, blah, blah. And suddenly it's like, oh, yeah, okay. I mean, I didn't know how to do that, but now I do. Either mode or hard mode, you set up the context for your voice guide, your audience avatar.

10:08And now you start saying, okay, now that I've zeroed in on a video idea, I'm going to just brain dump voice dictation or type whatever pleases you what I'm thinking about this video. How do you give it the instruction for the next step? The next kind of thing that I like to have is something that trains it on what a YouTube script looks like in relation to other types of writing. You can totally build these yourself. You could even just take a bunch of transcripts from your own channel, from channels in your niche that are doing well, not to say steal how they do stuff, but like structurally, what do you detect about the structure of a YouTube script?

10:44And how can we use that to train you on what a script should look like? I have a free thing that has my version of what YouTube structure looks like. It's in the description right now. That's kind of the next thing. And because I think then it saves you the hassle of having to be like, to say, here is my brain dump of thoughts. Now structure it like a YouTuber would. It kind of has this preloaded context of what a YouTube script would look like. so that that's really the next step is once you've brain dumped your stuff you want to either through the preloaded training or saying to it outright let's first of all figure out what the overarching structure of this would look like and it's going to come back to you with a suggestion and you you see if it it fits and go from that for people who are stubborn and haven't downloaded this free thing yet what are like the high level bits of this in there that people should know is like part of this structure?

11:36Three main blocks, shall we call them, that I would think of for a YouTube script. The hook is the obvious first block. It's quite distinct how you would go about writing a hook. There are different frameworks that different people have for this. For me, for educational hooks, I always think target transformation stakes. So that is, who is my target? Who's my audience? What is the transformation this video offers? And what is at stake if they don't achieve that transformation. The second main block is a segment. So these are your subtopics within the video. For every segment of my video, I think of it in terms of setup, tension, and payoff.

12:09So at the start of each segment, we set up why it's important for the viewer to know this thing before we can move on to the next thing. The tension is where we teach the lesson, essentially. We kind of reveal the information. And then the payoff at the end of that segment is where we ultimately, I suppose, reveal the answer, but like the understanding of that segment is now complete and we can move on to the next one. And then the third one is a call to action. So whether that is a call to action at the end to promote your next video or a product or service or a mid-video call to action promoting whatever it might be, a free lead magnet or something like that.

12:46Can you give me an example hook on a video done for yourself recently? I like this. You said it was target transformation stakes. Target transformation stakes. I would love to hear like an example of that. Target is always very easy for me because I've got a five page audience avatar document that I've made in the way that we kind of described earlier. So I don't need to think much about that. I know who I'm targeting. It's YouTubers who are interested in script writing, script writers for hire who wanna learn to get better at script writing so they can get more clients and blah, blah, blah. Transformation, if I take an example of one of my most recent videos and very apt for the conversation we're having now was how to set up a Claude project to turn Claude into a reliable script writing partner, as opposed to a sort of irritating assistant who forgets everything.

13:31The transformation within that is like you will go from not knowing how to do that to knowing how to do that. What's at stake is this idea, and it's something that I think a lot of my audience have felt, and it's something I certainly felt when I was getting on board with AI, is the sense that you will actually end up spending more time using AI to write your scripts than if you just use your brain. So determined are you that this is the new thing and hey, I should be more productive with this, that you end up just getting frustrated with it. It doesn't quite do what you want and you end up wasting more time.

14:02And so for me, that's what's at stake if they don't achieve the transformation is you will remain in that state where this sort of perceived productivity of AI slows you down, results in worse scripts, means your channel doesn't grow kind of thing. So that's what I think before going into physically trying to write a script. And the joy of AI these days is that, like you can say, look, here's my target, here's my transformation, here's what's at stake. Here is a hook framework that has performed really well on my channel in the past. Please express these factors in terms of this structure. And it's pretty good at very finite structural tasks like that a lot of the time.

14:40And then out of that comes a perfect script and I'm good to go, right? That's it, dude. And I'm out of a job. See you later. this? Yes. So the joy of all of this is that this allows me to go from blank page to V1 bullet point scripts very quickly, much more quickly than before. I'm hearing this and it's like, I could do this while I'm out on a walk with a stroller. Like if I had this infrastructure set up and I had an idea, I could literally do this while I'm out on a walk and it could create the artifact waiting for me when I get back to my desk. And that is a meaningful source of friction to eliminate that would make this feel much more real.

15:19And I would go from like, I should make that video someday to like, I bet I can record that tomorrow with a little bit of extra work here. Exactly that. A hundred percent. That's a really good point. So not only does it save you that time in the moment sat down, it may well be that you don't even have to be sat down for it to happen. But I think also it saves you so much mental strain having to restructure these thoughts on a page that perfectionism creeps in it feels like even if you're just typing notes like no i should arrange these in the correct order first and blah blah all of that thinking uh power is is saved by just being able to talk to it like a like a person so we have our structure say and we've agreed with it yes maybe with a bit of back and forth i am now happy with the six segments that we have for this video about jay becoming a dad for the second time um now i want to like move it forward into something more word for word.

16:10This is kind of a bit of an inflection point. Maybe that's the wrong word for it. It's a decision point on the tree as to whether you want to say, look, this is as much help as I needed. Now I sincerely want to be able to just do the rest of this by hand, as it were, by brain. I don't want to then have an AI physically try and write me a full word for word script because either that's not going to make me feel creatively fulfilled or B, I just don't trust that it's going to do what I want it to do yet. So there is a point at which you might just decide this is where I finish the AI thing. And that's, that's completely fine.

16:43If I were to say, I don't want AI to go any further, then I suppose you would then teach us how to think even more like a script writer and work through this, which is probably best to do anyway, because the more knowledge we have, the more collaborative we can be with bossing this machine around if that's what we choose to do. So let's say AI turned around a V1 of the script and we're looking at it and we want to take this from this V1 to something that I'm ready to record. Let's say at this point we have our structure. I'm going to assume at this point we've mentioned bullet point scripts a few times.

17:17It may be that you had your initial like here are the one sentence headline things for each of our segments. So like six, literally six sentences. says this is the skeleton we're assuming we've now expanded it into uh say two or three bullet points per per segment and so really the choice here is if you are someone who really enjoys uh riffing if your niche is the sort of niche that will allow you to sit down and riff then you can very much test that you can think okay i'm literally going to go with what we have sit down start talking see how it feels in the moment see how much pain is deferred to the edit because of how much i may have rambled if i was just going off of bullet points and then adapt and adjust each time you sit down.

17:56You think, actually, I felt completely out of control when I was sat down last time. This time, I want to go from two to three bullet points per segment to five to six. I'm going to turn that dial up. I think of it like a dial, just turning it up a little bit, testing it again next time, see how it feels. Did I ramble? Did that feel better? Was it now too prescriptive? Now I actually want to dial it back to four bullet points or something like that. So that's a really, I suppose, a personal thing. And that's if you choose the riffing side of things. if you now want to go fully word for word and this is something i massively prefer the the amount of pain that is saved on editing which is thankfully not even my job but even just on filming day the amount of false starts and thinking like oh did i screw this up wait did i actually say that thing five minutes ago that sets up the thing i need to say now for me that's just not worth it i much prefer to put an extra 30 minutes 60 minutes into writing a full word for to save me that pain later.

18:50If you prefer to spend less time scripting and more time recording, the one of 10 team just released a new feature that will help you edit your talking head videos fast. It's called AutoCut and it's part of their new video editor. I have a great video setup here in my studio, but I don't actually like to script full videos. That means my recordings have all kinds of extra takes and dead space. And it's not that it's hard to edit those out, but it's time consuming and I dread doing it. AutoCut takes your raw talking head footage, watches it frame by frame, removes silences, rambling, and retakes, enhances your audio, and gives you a clean cut that's ready to post in just minutes.

19:29It doesn't just put those extra takes in the trash either. It saves them so you can instantly switch to whatever take you prefer. The 1 of 10 team is known for their deep knowledge of YouTube, and this tool is already better and faster than any other tool I've tried for cutting your raw footage quickly. Visit the link in the description and you can try AutoCut yourself for free. Then the focus, and this is what I always focus on, is obviously the hook is very important, but the setups and the payoffs are the most important thing that I like to write word for word almost regardless. So your setup line at the start of each segment is like another hook, basically.

20:06It's the reminder of not only why I care about this overall topic, but why this particular subtopic is so essential in me moving forward. So if we take the example of my Claude project video, or how to set up a Claude project, the first step of that was literally, you need to set up a project because a lot of people don't do that. But the way we set that up compellingly is not step one, set up a project on your Claude chat. But before we get into the five documents you're gonna need, we first have to fix one of the most common mistakes I still see dozens of my students making that turns AI into a useless assistant or something like that.

20:49I see. I'm hearing that as an open loop. Yeah, exactly that. Exactly that. So focusing on those open loops, those setups at the start of each segment, and just reminding the viewer in a curiosity-inducing way why this next step is important, those are those moments in your retention graph where people will go. It's when you finish one subject and you don't immediately make it clear why the next subject is going to be important to them specifically in the context of what they want and what the video title promised. If you had a literal script you've worked on in the recent past, especially if it's for your channel, so you know that you have the permission to share it, where you could be like, let me walk you through what the hook looked like in this video.

21:27And then I'm going to show you one of these setups and payoffs in one of these segments. I think that would be enormously helpful. Can I do it on my app where I wrote it? Sure. This actually is that very video that we were just talking about. This is how to set up a claw project for script writing. So you can see this is the software that I've built. And so I break it up into these setup, tension, and pay off things that I've spoken about a lot. Very visually pleasing. This does make a lot of sense. It's modular. You're talking about the structure in a modular way. You're showing this in a modular way.

21:53And for what it's worth, anybody watching this, this is not a paid endorsement or partnership with George on this. But this is a great way to visualize it. And so here we are. So in terms of the hook, have you ever spent hours fighting with Claude? This already, even though it's not explicitly saying, if you're a YouTuber who struggles with, but it's implicitly showing people, I understand you. This is the struggle that you have. So if you've ever spent hours fighting with Claude, only to check the clock and realize this YouTube script took two times longer to write than if you just use your brain, then listen up.

22:21I'm using quite casual language in moments like this. With this video, we were experimenting with some like kind of comical intro B-roll. So this is the idea that it's like, I show that I understand you. I know who my target is. The problem with AI to help write scripts isn't that it's not good enough yet. It's because you're not giving it enough context. I guess this is kind of implying the stakes. It's a little bit tricky to always distill these into the exact three things. But like if I was listing these things out, I would be thinking when I list out my stakes, I'd be saying AI continuously takes longer.

22:51People don't understand anything about giving it context. They don't understand what is even necessary to improve the AI that they're using. And so for me, like this is how the stakes kind of filter through. But in any case, it's like this is a moment I often find comes up in my hooks is there's this kind of turning point moment. It's like a, here's your current situation, but the truth is X. Well, the real problem is this. I've heard of a framework that's P-A-I-P-S and the I is intrigue. And this is reminding me of intrigue. Like P-A is pain, agitate. We've kind of talked about that already. But intrigue is like sort of a point of surprise before introducing a potential future is that next P.

23:31So this line makes me feel like, oh, it's a head turner. It's like, you know something that I don't know. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Having written the last eight videos with the help of AI, again, we're kind of talking about that future state, but I'm not explicitly being yet like, if you want to write your next script using AI, it's sort of both implying my own credibility, but also it's presenting an image of their future state. So again, I think of that as the transformation expressed through credibility, I suppose. And spent the last three months in the trenches training my own script writing app.

24:03I think I got rid of in the trenches in the end because when I spoke, it just sounded a bit weird. I'll show you the exact five documents I think it became in the end. You need to turn Claude from a forgetful assistant into a reliable script writing partner. So that's fully the transformation that we're ending on. So that's how I think about the hooks. And then now we come down to the first segment. So we're not saying in this first segment, yes, it's about making a new project, but we're not saying the first step is making a project. So that's how I set it up. Tension is a really interesting one.

24:32We could talk for quite a long time about tension. But the way I like to think of this is, if I back up for a second, the problem people have with payoffs is they feel like they have to defer giving any value at all until the payoff. Like it feels like it has to be this big explosive moment at the end of a segment. Right, like one payoff per video. I'm thinking about this. These are like, you're nestling multiple payoffs into this. The whole video itself is a payoff. There are five payoffs that add up to the payoff is what I'm seeing. Exactly, exactly that. So yeah, lots of payoffs throughout.

25:08But even within that, I still see people thinking that like, sure, I get the idea. I have to have a payoff at the end of my segment. But that means I have to literally say nothing of any value until I hit it. And the rest is all kind of preamble. what I like to do is think of it in this slightly different way where it's like I start by showing people kind of I suppose we've done a little bit of this in the hook but we're now going into detail on the user's present state so it's once again showing at the start of this we've got their curiosity with the setup now we're showing here is the thing you probably do currently so in this case it's I was surprised to find a bunch of my students were still using clawed in an extremely siloed off way starting a new chat every time explaining who they were and what uh what they wanted AI to help them with.

25:50This is very much what we've been discussing in this podcast anyway. And then we kind of move through into here's what you actually need to do, create a project, here's what a project is, and then go and create it. This is a slightly atypical one because this is so step-by-step go and do a specific thing. It's normally a bit more kind of nebulous, but for anyone who does have a channel where you're showing people step-by-step things, I think this will be the key takeaway here is make sure that you, rather than just saying step one, do this, it's explaining in a curio opening a loop about why this is important then showing them what they currently do and why it's bad why it doesn't work and then you can move through into here's what you should do instead so then the payoff line and this is i've kind of shifted the way i think about these over time but you'll notice that it's not really like we're giving the final like here's what you have to do in that payoff line it's more bringing people to a level playing field and saying so here is the state we are now in as a result of what you have just learned here is the new status quo you have now done that you are set up and we are ready to do whatever comes next it almost reads like it's a setup for the next setup which makes me think about our first conversation where we talked about signposting is this how you see signposting today to a degree i think maybe this is a slightly atypical example because we still want the next setup to be curiosity inducing and open a loop, which is why you can see here, it's like I say here, the first document, I'm not going to say the first document is this, it's the first document is going to help you fix the thing that you're curious about.

27:18But if I look at any other examples in here that explain this well, I think this is probably a good example that shows it off. I wouldn't say we're necessarily signposting what comes next yet. I do think that is reserved for the following setup. but again it's like clarifying with the information you didn't have that you now have that you learned in this segment let's just take a pause to reflect on like what what is it that we have now unlocked the ability to do where is it that we now stand in the overall context of this topic and i think this is a good example of this where after we've uploaded and this is i think the third document that i show people we're now just clarifying okay take a pause we've been saying all this stuff about these documents you have to upload.

28:05But practically speaking, let's zoom out. What can your project now do so that you understand why we're doing all of this? Yeah, tell me if this resonates with you. I think I'm following what you're saying. But the other thing that I'm latching onto is some speaking advice I've gotten, which is tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them, tell them what you told them. And this almost mirrors that a little bit in some of these cases. But maybe the payoff isn't like totally saying, let me close the loop on what I just told you. But it seems like maybe it could be. yeah i this is a really kind of tricky semantic dichotomy sounds like the name of a band yes i think i agree with you in principle but i think we want to try and avoid it's treading the line between that and not just making it a summary so yes tell them what you told them but i think i want to do it in a slightly different way so i'm not just repeating so you just added this document It's more like you add it.

29:02So having added this document, new information, this is now what your project is capable of, thanks to what you just did, rather than just simply repeating it. Yeah, that's good. Does that distinction make sense? It's kind of a tricky one. And that's kind of what I'm trying to do with like these comparisons. Because when you tell me like, yes, but it clarifies more like what is a payoff then? What is a good payoff? It's not a summary. It's not a setup for the setup. It's putting a period on the end of the sentence, yes. but it's also, it's a breath in one way. It also seems like it's making the person feel good and excited and accomplished in another way, which obviously summaries don't do.

29:40Yes, exactly. I think that's a really, a really good distinction. Make people feel good, catch them up as it were. Like if anyone's kind of gotten lost or they're wondering, wait, have I, have I grasped this? Just taking that moment to say, yes, you've got this. And doesn't it feel great? As opposed to saying, here's what you just learned in much the same way. The AI in V1 is going to give us like, here's how many sections I think we should have. Is the goal in your mind to reduce the number of sections necessary? How do I think about the number of sections that are in a video? I always come back to the wise man Gandalf when I'm asked this question, which is that a wizard arrives precisely when he means to.

30:22this is a tricky one there are kind of no rules to this I think a lot of it comes from just the soft skill of doing this over and over again and figuring out okay when I talk about x in my videos my retention always drops off on reflection this period where my retention was kind of diving continuously I realized that I was sort of talking about the same topic but in slightly different words twice in a row or something like that I think really it just comes down to honest reflection and looking back at what you've written. I know one thing that can certainly help with this is just showing it to someone else, whether it's in your niche or even better sometimes, someone who's not in your niche, someone who can look at it objectively with no feeling that, or no investment in the topic, no kind of preconceptions of what it's about.

31:07And just saying like, is this interesting to read? Does it fall off at any point for you? When did you get bored? So outsourcing it is a good one. But I think overall, if we're just talking, you sat at your desk, I think having no preconceptions of how many segments a video should have is key. If you're trying to target a certain length of your video, I know people like to try and have longer videos for the watch time, whatever. But if you've got an overly inflated video that doesn't have any substance to it, then it's not going to be interesting. So I would say a wizard arrives precisely when he means to.

31:41How long is a piece of string? Like make it the number of segments that it has to be, be objective and look at, am I including this segment because it contributes to the understanding of the subject? Or am I doing it just to bloat the watch time? Something that I've been trying to push myself to do more of is just slow down and feel better about every step of the process. Because that's the input I can control that will probably lead to better outputs. But I get to this point where it's like, I'll get really excited when I feel like I have the idea that I want. And it's like, I'm just going to go rip that off and record that.

32:13and under-investing in pre-production, I think is like the biggest tax I'm paying right now on the channel, is I'm just under-investing in pre-production all the ways, and you see that cost in the performance of a video. If a video doesn't do well, and you think, well, like, well, I was proud of it, and I did everything I can, that's different than, I should have taken more time on that, because then you're probably not going to go and just remake that same video the next week. It's just worth feeling better in pre-production. One just thought that came to me as you were saying that there is, I think, a way of making sure that you're still putting some of that thought and time into pre-production, even if you're short of time, especially with AI now, is even if you feel like you don't know what you want your video to be and you don't know how you want to structure it and you feel overwhelmed by the idea of it, spieling to an AI and having it present a structure back to you will immediately set off red flags in your mind of things that it definitely got wrong.

33:18So if you look at a structure that it has come back with, I guarantee, and maybe it'll nail it, but most of the time it will have come up with some idea that you're like, no, no, that's totally not it. And then you realize, oh, actually, I do have some thoughts on this and I do have my opinions on this, but having it presented to me in like slightly the wrong order is much easier then for me to think, okay, no, I would shift segment one to segment two. I would maybe add an extra segment about this. I would connect these two ideas like this. And then suddenly you've got your structure out and it feels that you have invested that time in pre-production, but you're sort of spurred into it by seeing what was definitely not the right structure as opposed to just trying to do it from a blank page.

33:57Yeah. Can you go back to showing your screen? I want to see you talk about your CTA now. Yes. Okay. So in this video, I didn't have any product CTAs. I think because I mentioned my AI script writing tool in the hook, I just put the first link or the second link as a link to the waitlist for this tool. That's actually been a really effective call to action for me is not mentioning it at all, but just showing the thing that I'm talking about the whole video and then putting a link in there in the description. People intuitively just want to go and learn more about it. And in that case, then, is there no end besides like maybe an end card like you talked about in our first conversation of just like tying it to a next video?

34:38Or do you just let the payoff of the final segment be the the end of the video? No. So this is my absolute every single time without fail thing that I do is every video has to link to another one in a compelling way. But at the end of every single video, I'm thinking about a link. So that is back to something in this video so we're trying to make it not apparent that the video is about to end we're basically saying we've already spoken about xyz thing or now you know how to do blah blah blah blah if you couldn't see the timeline at the bottom you might not know that the video is about to end then we want to add some uh curiosity so um about something in the next video um so in this case here if we go through these one by one link back to something in this video now this project setup is a great starting point done it's like simple as that that's all you need um that shows that we are talking about we're referring fucking hell sorry i'm just grammarly does not want to go away it's like i will leave when i decide yeah dude it's okay it's okay we can read it it's fine i'm just removing you from chrome grammarly you are you are so gone um no it's still here

35:49this is ridiculous let's see i laughed so hard that i unplugged my own headphones okay so if we take a look here this is clearly the link this is where we say now this project setup is a great starting point it's just referencing something uh well basically the entirety of the topic of this video then we raise the curiosity here where i say but what if i told you we can ask claude to gradually improve itself over time so each new script you write gets closer and closer to your style every time i think in the moment i must have riffed something else here because I say time twice in quick succession.

36:23We want to avoid repetition. And then finally, we just have the promise, which is usually spelled like this. There we are.

36:34CTA, which is where we give the explicit promise. And this is where the facade is kind of broken. And we're like, well, yeah, we're promoting another video, go watch it. But ultimately it's an offer, right? We're giving the viewer something else for free. We'll watch this video next where I'll walk you through how to do this using a simple prompt that you already have inside your claw project. So it's like we're promising something that is exciting for you and feels low lift. So this is like your non-negotiable, this ends every video. I have a question on this point because I saw an interesting strategy and I'd love to get your take on this because I think there's a cost to the strategy that you're going to say as well, but I wonder if the benefit is worth it.

37:10So I saw a guy who had an unlisted video on his channel. This is Taki Moore. He had an unlisted video that's essentially a video sales letter. and what he does is he ends some of his videos not every video but a video that like clearly showed some credibility and somebody who watched the end of that video is probably a qualified lead for his business and his end card and his end of the video is linking to his unlisted essentially vsl what do you think about that strategy i think that's really cool i love that i think like anything it's kind of balanced and you're trying to figure out what am i optimizing for mostly here.

37:51The advantage of this strategy and always ending with something else is that you can create these kind of infinite loops of people just watching more and more and more stuff and it doesn't matter which video they land on first, there's always going to be kind of infinite trailer videos they could keep binging if they wanted to. I suppose the only risk with this strategy is, hey, if someone, if it's like the first video that someone's landed on is that one and they get pitched something at the end, what is the effect that has on them? Do they think, I've been sort of sold to here. It was kind of an ask, not an offer.

38:19But ultimately, like, I think that sounds like a really, a really good tactic and one that I might steal. And clearly, you would think he would have been testing something like that, right? And the pros would outweigh the cons. Yeah. And I imagine that same video could probably be like a good channel trailer. I know Ed from Film Booth has tried stuff like this, where like his channel trailer is essentially a BSL. I think it's really smart. I mean, the biggest pain point we have on the channel and candidly, why we've had to pull back some resources on the channel was we were spending far more than we were clearly earning from the channel because we never invested in connecting the channel to the core business.

38:52And this is like a really consistent way to know that this is working. If you have a video that, you know, when people watch this video, they're interested in learning more and going deeper with me. And if that is true, then I think this actually makes the YouTube as a discovery engine for the business, a much shorter, less luck filled like process for getting people into the business. Yeah, I think, again, that's something you can really easily start using AI to help you with where it's something like this that has a formula that I try and use. Anything that's formula based, if you've got something simple, we spoke about it with the hook as well.

39:27It's very easy then to plug in the actual content that you want and to ask it to express that content in terms of that formula. So in your case, I suppose using a formula like that, but saying that, hey, actually, we don't want to promote another video. We want to promote X or Y product. We want to promote the lab. We want to talk about whatever. We want to promote a VSL that talks about the lab or something. And it would be fairly easy then for it to come up with a relatively subtle plug in the style that we've just seen here, but for a VSL. And it's a spectrum because it doesn't have to be like a straight up like sales video.

39:59It could be a video that you just know when people watch this video, a lot of them turn into customers. So how can I feed more people into that video even beyond its own packaging and CTR? I think is a smart strategy. Intentionally antagonistic question. Okay. Yeah. Because you are a script writer and probably a lot of people who have historically been like, I could be a freelance script writer. I'm going to get into this, there is a certain amount of like incentive, if not bias towards saying like, we should keep human scriptwriters. So if you were to take as much of an objective stance away from yourself as you can, where would you say the human input, the human in the loop in this process is most essential right now?

40:49That's such a good question. I think to aid my case here, at least in terms of the objectivity. I'm in the fortunate position where I've managed to sort of work my way out of having to write scripts for people. And so I think I'm now able to grow my personal brand or whatever you want to call it as someone who helps people learn to do script writing in whatever context that is. And now that context is AI related. So I think I'm able to divorce myself a little bit from the desire to like have script writers around because it's what I used to do a lot and it's what I still do for my own channel.

41:20One thing that I've learned a lot about since starting to really use AI a lot and using it to code my own script writing app, for example, is I've spent a lot of time watching how AI actually does what it does behind the scenes. Like, you know, in Claude, for example, you can sort of see how it's thinking as it's thinking, and you can read its decision making. You sort of learn all these little ways in which it may appear to be doing something well. And then the output that comes out, it actually reveals, oh, hang on, it wasn't doing these like 10 things that it claimed very confidently that it was.

41:49so I think when it comes to script writing the final say on like when have I done enough revisions for this script when is this actually record ready that ultimate decision comes down to a person's brain because AI will always have something else that it's like oh and we could change this and oh you actually didn't do this correctly and oh this could be stronger so we can make it land better or whatever and it will just keep doing that kind of infinitely and I think that moment where you have to say to yourself, no, actually, I think this is ready. I know my audience as well-roundedly as I possibly could.

42:22I'm the one who says that we've now done enough revisions on this and I think it's going to hit really well. But I think there are those moments that come throughout the process. So it might be when structuring out the script in the first place, AI will be like, hey, here's a brilliant structure based on your audience avatar that I think they're going to love. And you can read that and be like, I like 70 % of these ideas, but ultimately I want to rearrange x and y because i know this will be how i would actually explain it or how they would receive it better and so again the point of deciding structuring is now done that kind of needs to be me because ai will keep on coming up with new things that you should add or change or improve there is a certain courage to cut the ai off you know and i think that's that's kind of a Metaskill through all AI usage that people need is courage and trust in your own intuition, your own taste, your own gut to know when you're getting into like the recursive improvement for improvement sake that is no longer actually improvement.

43:23Maybe this is related, maybe it's not, but it's an aside I want to take. I have a similar video that I want to make, but it's kind of talking about like, hey, I'm about to have a second kid. And the first time I did this, I didn't prepare well. And so I'm preparing differently this time. And where I kind of get hung up is I don't know if there's enough there there. When you're kind of laying this out through, I'm imagining you're using like whisper flow or some sort of dictation. When you're laying this out, when do you feel confident that you've got a video that's long enough to warrant existing?

43:57Oh, that's a really good question. I think with a lot of anything creative, there's an element of brutality that comes down to it in the end. There have been some scripts that I have written which have seemed like a great idea, have been maybe five segments or subsections initially. And then as we've kind of workshopped, either me personally or me in collaboration with an AI have workshopped it, it's kind of trimmed down and down to maybe the point where there's three segments. And it reaches a point where I'm like, I think this could just be a newsletter or something that's a bit more short form.

44:31And so I think the first thing would be to say, accepting the reality that it may be that there just isn't enough to the topic. But I think this is one of the real meta skills to learn. And it's something I'm sure you're aware of anyways, like just the ability to talk to AI, to extract from it exactly what you want. So talking to it in natural language and say, look, here's the predicament I'm in. I have this exact topic I want to talk about. Here's the context on my last video about having a kid. This one I want to do now is about how I wasn't prepared properly, but I'm worried there isn't going to be enough to talk about it.

45:04Knowing what you know about my audience, if you don't have an audience avatar, like here are 10 transcripts and videos we did recently. Here are some recent comments from them. Knowing what you know about them, what blind spots do I have that could relate to this topic that we could put into this video and kind of using it then to challenge you and to almost make you answer some questions you might not have even thought to ask yourself that can then contribute to making a video that feels like it warrants existence. To kind of close us out here, what's your relationship to AI right now? Obviously you're embracing it for making a tool and you're using it in the script writing process.

45:39Are you just like full in like, yep, toothpaste out of the tube, I'm using it, I love it. How do you feel about AI? It's an interesting moment, isn't it? Because it's quite, it becomes harder and harder to extricate yourself from it and to reason with yourself and think as you would have thought before what's now possible was possible my business didn't rely on me moving with the times like this would i be going as all in on it as i am i don't know uh i'm certainly loving building an app this this is something that i had spoken to different companies about in the last few years that i sort of being brought on as like a as the sort of the brains as it were as the script writer behind a tool that would then be coded by a bunch of very intelligent people.

46:28The fact that those very intelligent people are now not strictly needed, although I'm sure anyway, there's a whole discussion there, but I love that I've been able to build my own thing. This is the tool that I've dreamt of making and it does all the things that I've always wanted. That's very cool. Do I feel the most creatively fulfilled that I have? in the four or five years I've been running this business? In some ways, no. And as time goes on, the more I kind of want to shut it all down, go live in the woods and make hour-long YouTube videos just chopping wood. This is exactly how I feel. I feel like the more I embrace AI, the less I enjoy my work.

47:05And I myself start to feel like a factory rather than any type of artisan. Like anything that I've used AI to do to get to the point of done and skipped the doing, I just have no affinity or pride in that work. Not to say it's bad, but to say like I just don't feel pride in it because I didn't do it. This is my biggest thing is like, okay, this can help me do a lot of things that I have been doing, but to what end? I've got to find the things that are absolutely non-negotiable that I enjoy taking pride in that I want to do. And for me, writing the essays has been a part of that. Writing the book is part of that.

47:52YouTube scripts, we had a video we did and I don't get excited about writing the intros for our podcast episodes. And so I was like, here, my AI agent, here are my top 10 performing videos. Learn what you can about the structure. Here's the transcript of the rest of the edit. Help me make an intro for this. And it did as good of a job as I would have, given my current skill set and the time I would put into it. Did I then show that off and say, look at what I made for that intro? Absolutely not. So I'm deeply conflicted. Yeah, I think I'm completely with you. It's hard, and I don't know if you feel this, especially from a business point of view, where I'm trying to build an AI-related business that doesn't completely remove the human element.

48:46I don't want to build a script writing tool that writes every single word for you and you go away and you record something that you just didn't, you had nothing to do with, which is why the sort of core feature of it is this discursive element that we've discussed where it's like there's a chat, you chat to it, you leave your voice notes and you kind of work with them as if they were a script writer that you'd hired. But at the same time, I'm very conscious that this tool also would completely serve people who want to start a YouTube channel as a cash cow, faceless, no shade on faceless in general, but like one of those channels where it's like, hey, I don't have to do anything.

49:22I can AI the voiceover. This guy's got this tool out and it can just AI the script and I can AI the thumbnail. And so being conscious that you're serving both the more conscious people who want to keep the human element involved, but also the people who want to just outsource it all. And yeah, that is kind of conflicting. It's a weird moment. Yeah, it's tough. I think people want to maximize their outcome and minimize their effort. And you follow that all the way down and people want everything just like fully out of the box done. When you actually watch their behavior, that's what they want most of the time, most people.

50:00So it's, yeah, it's challenging. And it's, I restrain myself from the temptation to become like an AI educator because there's so much tailwind to it. And it's what people want, but it's just not what I want to do. It's an interesting time, but I appreciate you sharing with us. We'll put a link to the document you recommended and this tool that you showed us in the description. George, thanks for coming back on the show. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash core20.

50:48That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. My name is Taylor. The economy is crushing moms like me right now. Even working full time, my paychecks went straight to child care and all of the bills. Nutritious food is really important to me. High food costs and changes to nutrition programs can strain family budgets. Your donation helps Feeding America provide the nourishing food families need. I'm hopeful for stability. When budgets strain, your gift sustains. Give now at feedingamerica.org slash community response.