Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:05
Doctor Jeremy Weisz here. I’m here with Paul Bigham. We can check him out at bighamagency.com. And this is great people, great resources. Paul is definitely one of those great people. And he’s got a lot of great resources. So, Paul, I just want to start off with talk about your company and what you do. And we’re going to talk about some of his favorite resources. Could be books. It could be podcasts. It could be newsletters. It could be whatever strikes his fancy. Paul, tell people about what you do first.
Paul Bigham: 13:33
Yeah. Thank you. Jeremy. Good to be with you as always. You’re my you’re my good buddy in many different venues and occasions. So it’s fun, fun to be together. So we have Bigham Agency. We are a direct response agency, and primarily we work with faith-based humanitarian organizations to raise funds for them. We, as I like to say, we we feed the hungry, house the homeless, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and occasionally we save the lost in our faith in that area. And we do strategy, copy, creative, do all the segmentation, all the marketing so that we can figure out what works and do more of what works and what doesn’t work, and do less of what doesn’t work in that area.
And we raised a little bit over $3 billion to date, and we still are doing so. And part of that is I think about two, 2.2 billion has gone for the state of Israel. We’ve helped do that. I’ve been to Ukraine a couple of times, been to Israel several times, and we’re very supportive of that anchor of defense, which is really the first defense for us in the summer in America to save us from being overthrown.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:47
So and a lot of the the reason you do there is is from non is from not from Jewish organizations though. Right.
Paul Bigham: 14:56
Fundamentally 99% is from Christian, you know, really Christian Christian Zionists, Christian evangelicals or whatever demarcation you want to you want to place on there. But it’s not that Jewish people don’t give. They obviously do. It’s just that we don’t work with that many Jewish people. But but some. There certainly are friends and a little over 30, 32 years, I think it is right now. We’ve been working with the state of Israel.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:23
Amazing. Well, thanks for all the work you do. And some of your favorite resources.
Paul Bigham: 15:31
Yeah, I’d like to do so. I teach a class at the University of Texas at Dallas this semester. It’s principles of marketing. I teach consumer behavior, advanced brand promotion, which is really advertising. That’s the new the new word for the advertising class. It’s a really fun class. So in this, in those classes, actually, I bring all of these resources together and I, I have four videos that I show over the, the life of the semester. And one of them is called “It’s Not About the Nail, It’s Not About the Nail”.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:04
That is one of my favorite videos of all time.
Paul Bigham: 16:06
It is just an incredible video. And for those of you who have not seen it, I won’t. I won’t do the spoiler, but it’s like a minute three or something like that. It’s very, very effective.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:18
I’m looking at it at least the one I’m looking at. Paul has. 28 million views, right? When you look at.
Paul Bigham: 16:28
It, probably.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:29
Yeah.
Paul Bigham: 16:29
And I think one of my favorite lines is that it snags your sweater.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:34
So that is one of my favorites also.
Paul Bigham: 16:37
So it’s a very it’s a very male, female oriented video.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:43
You can go to YouTube here. It is right here. And just search. It’s not about the nail. This is the it’s probably there’s probably more videos on this exact thing.
It’s it’s a minute and 41 seconds. Yeah. It’s worth every second of it and absolutely.
Paul Bigham: 16:58
And it’s it’ll. And if you’re in one of those relationships where you’re not applying the, the theory here, this is going to improve your relationship for sure. If you do that. So and not a.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:09
Week doesn’t go by where I recommend someone watch this video.
Paul Bigham: 17:13
Is that right?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:14
Oh yeah, 100%. Really good. I didn’t know what Paul was going to say, by the way, with this, but yeah.
Paul Bigham: 17:21
Yeah, because I’ll be in, you know, a discussion with someone and I’ll go. Not about the nails, not about the nails, not about the nails. So it helps me to redirect my fixing everything in the world. So it’s really a good thing. So I like that. And the whole the, the sort of the theme of these four that I use is it’s about knowing yourself, about knowing yourself in that area. You know, Shakespeare said this above all, to thine own self be true. And that’s out of hamlet. And it’s I think it’s Dan Sullivan. I’m not 100% sure. So if it is Dan, great. I want to make sure that I, I give him that Dan says a little bit different. He says be clear with yourself first so other people can be clear with you. And that’s about knowing what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. And it sets up that that understanding, the more you understand yourself, the more you can understand other people in that situation in that as well.
So that’s one of the ones that I like. The other one is you and I were big sports fans. It’s who’s on first, the old Abbott and Costello vaudeville skit that they do, and it’s about communication. And that’s why I put it in with the communication model. When I go through and explain what the communication model is, I play who’s on first. And I have 60 kids in my class. Kids or young people that are 18 to 24 have 60 in my class. And of course they’re going, who’s on first? You know what’s on second. You know, I don’t know who’s on third. And and so I talk to them about how it’s the the language that we use. There’s not one thing in this. It’s about an eight minute you it looks like you got a six minute there. It’s really it’s about an eight minute I think it’s 801.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:11
810 maybe.
Paul Bigham: 19:12
- I said 801 but it’s 809. Well, no. Oh you know what it’s for I think. Here watch me. 804. All right. That was pretty close. 804 and it’s about communication. It’s about you can be 100% correct going back to to it’s not about the nail. You’d be 100% correct. Who’s on first. What’s on second I don’t know. Third can be very, very confusing. Although it’s 100% correct and it’s about the model. If the message you send is not received, then there’s no message at all in that area. So I think that’s a great teaching tool in that area. And then the third one is the Monkey Business Illusion. And again this is we see what we want to see.
We hear what we want to see. And we think what we want to think in that area. And it’s it’s it’s raise a reticular activation system is that we, we pick out the things that we want to see, and we block out the things that we don’t want to see. And, you know, if you if you’re if you’re in the market for a white Camry and every time you go out to drive, you’re going to see a thousand white Camrys and you won’t see another thousand blue Hondas, you know, because you you seek out what you want, which I think it’s a lot about life, is that we seek out what we want in life. And if we can be clear what we want in life, we can seek it out in a lot easier fashion and that we can go through. And then the last one. And I just played this one last night. It’s it’s the ant in the circle. I think it’s about 21 seconds. It’s really.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:42
Quickly. Well the is this the one is this is the Monkey Business Illusion?
Paul Bigham: 20:46
Yeah. The Monkey Business Illusion.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:48
Okay.
Paul Bigham: 20:48
Got it. Yeah, right through there.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:49
I’ll. I’ll bookmark this and watch it later. Yeah, I’ve seen this one.
Paul Bigham: 20:54
It’s a really fun thing. And I have a great time with my class because I divide the class up. I’ve got 60 kids, I’ve got 30 and 30, and I do a demarcation line and I go through and it’s about what you’re focusing on, and I’ll get them going with each other because. Because some of them will see the illusion and some of them will not see the illusion. And I get them going back and forth about what do you mean it’s there? No, it’s not there. Yes, it is there. And again, it’s about communication and about seeing what we want to see in that area. And then the last one, the ant and the circle. It’s also a spider circle.
But it’s, it’s a if someone takes a Sharpie and draws a circle around an ant. A live ant and the ant will actually go up to this ink border demarcation line and will not cross over it. He just keeps going up and comes and all it is, is just ink on paper, and eventually it’ll bump itself out. It draws another circle around the ant. The ant will stay in that little small circle, going around and around until it figures out that it can get across, and then it goes away. So the point there that I bring up is that we are we’re our own jailer in our own jail, is that we lock ourselves into things that we could be doing, that we’ve told ourselves that we we don’t either have the ability or the competence or the resources or the the. The the misgivings about the the tools and the resources that we have on that we’re self limiting in that area. And where there was a quote, the greatest prison is the one that we build for ourselves.
Simon Bolivar, I think, is the one that said that. And, you know, and so many times in life, myself, certainly so many times in lives that I limit myself to when I really could do more.
And what I try to do is pass that on to these young people is to branch out, try something, you know, give it a shot, you know? And if you get too far outside of the line of the circle, you know, the marks a lot. Come on back in. That’s okay too. You have to do that. There. There’s another expression I really love. And it says if you want to find new grounds, you want to find new lands. You have to be comfortable with losing sight of the shore for a very long time. I just think that’s just such a great thought about when you’re trying new things. It’s not always going to be clear. Here we go. There is this. No, that’s not the.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:22
Yeah. They were showing it right here.
Paul Bigham: 23:24
Oh they were showing. There it is. So there’s the ants. Yeah. The ants just keeps bumping into. There’s nothing there. It. Maybe. Maybe there’s fumes, you know, maybe that’s what it’s responding to. But there there’s no physical barrier. And so many times in life we we limit ourselves for non-physical barriers. And the other thing that I tie into that is that is what’s reality and what’s illusion, what’s perception in that area, reality versus perception. The reality is there’s nothing binding you.
The perception is I can’t go outside because there’s a circle in through that area and through there. So I, I think they’re very illustrative of, of life in general. And I enjoy showing those and sharing it with my students. And it’s, it seems at least a few of them stay awake long enough to, to, to to pay attention to what’s going on. And I mean, I really do get notes back from them about how this is making their life better. So that’s that’s a lot of fun. I enjoy doing that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:25
I mean, it really does shift the mindset, right? And that can be applied to anything. I’m also curious, Paul, from your standpoint, I mean, you’ve been in direct response for a long time now. Do you have any favorites like copywriting or direct response books or resources over the years that are top of your list?
Paul Bigham: 24:49
Yeah, they are. And even with Tony, if I if I may, Jeremy, add on an AI because there’s the oh you don’t you don’t write anymore. You just dump it into AI. AI is just a tool. That’s all it is.
And it’s a tool of what’s already in there. And it’s not the tool of the creativity of the individual. So definitely use AI. Get started with it, break the inertia, get going with it. But the polish, the pile is like Michelangelo’s granite. You know, the David, you know, that was just a block of granite. But it was the polishing and the moving and the chipping that that brought David out of that block of nothing or a block of undefined form in that area. So I think Ogilvy on Advertising is is still the still the Bible of advertising. I just think it’s with a little B it’s the Bible of advertising. Ogilvy on Advertising. And you can it’s out of print, but you can still get it on Amazon or eBay or something like that. So that one’s really good.
And then Eugene Schwartz, his stuff is very good. He he has a great quote, as matter of fact. Let me let me do two. So he has a great quote that he says no copy is ever written. Copy is constructed. It’s a series of piecing together things that wind up being copy eventually. And that is so true. You start messy. That’s another expression I love. Start messy. Just get something down on paper and then start the editing process, which is the other quote I’d like to do, and it’s Clayton Makepeace. I wish I’d met Clayton. I never, never got to meet him. I was in his circle and then sadly, he passed away before I could actually meet him personally. But but he he would say to his Cub riders, never compare my 17th draft to your first draft. So this is Clayton Makepeace, one of the best writers of all, certainly of all current times.
Who’s saying one draft of a Cub person is not to be compared with my 17th draft? Because it takes that long? Eight, nine, ten, 17, 25, whatever, whatever number it takes to do that, that I think it’s giving permission to, to be better in that situation. And that’s what good writers do. They take whatever source they have, whether it’s AI or it’s not actually AI’s machine learning, but they take machine learning and transform it into something really human and really emotive and really captures the emotion. Because all, all decisions are based on emotion, all decisions are based on emotion and then they’re justified with logic. You know, in that area. So you got to get that emotion in into the copy. Get get the people engaged, you know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:33
Paul, I love that. Actually, I just looked up Ogilvy on Advertising on Amazon. It’s only $11.16.
Paul Bigham: 27:40
One of the best $11 you’ll ever spend.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:42
So I have not. I listen to everything. I may have to upload it to a site that will do the audio for me so that I can I can just listen to it on like three times speed or something like that. But no, this is great, Paul. First of all, I want to be the first one to thank. Thanks for. It’s always great chatting with you and hearing your expertise and resources. People can check out bighamagency.com to learn more and we’ll see you over next time. Paul, thanks so much.
Paul Bigham: 28:11
Great to be with you, Jeremy. So long.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:12
All right. Jeremy Weisz here with Dale Castro. You can check them out on their website. And Dale, I’ll pull up your website in a second overlapinteractive.com but I’m here. This is great people great resources, deals. Awesome. Not just as a basketball coach, but as an entrepreneur. And we’re going to talk about some of his favorite books. He’s an avid reader. I always love suggestions. And before we do, they’ll just tell people your company and what you do.
Dale Castro: 28:42
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Jeremy and the books that I really enjoy. I’m sorry.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:50
You start off with what you guys do first.
Dale Castro: 28:52
Okay.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:52
All right. We’ll dive into it. I’m going to pull up your website actually as you’re talking, because you have a cool website here. Tell people what you do.
Dale Castro: 29:00
Yeah, absolutely. So Overlap Interactive we are our focus is we’re digital agency for physical spaces as we start to niche down. But we are a full service marketing agency design and development. And so we are we just celebrated our 10th year. And so we’re really proud of that and really just started on designing websites and development, and from there expanded to different services that were bolted on and, you know, creating more stickiness inside there.
So we’re we’re definitely strong in the development side, which has been great in this space because there’s a high need for integration. Having a full stack tech stack, understanding how to connect with CRM APIs, integrations as well too, but on the design side and creative side as well too, you must have that strong strategy, understand what we’re trying to execute, create that plan, and then tell that story.
These are places where we say that we are digital agency for physical spaces. That’s everything from master plan communities to ballparks and arenas to hospitality like outriggers, one of our clients in Hawaii, and really concentrating and telling the story of those spaces and then allowing through, you know, strategy of creating digital products and marketing efforts as well to to fill up those spaces. You know, selling tickets, selling homes, even working with non-profits like habitat for humanity as well to and getting needed families into homes as well too.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:46
So I love that show. And if you’re listening to the audio, we are on their website and you can poke around here, overlapinteractive.com and you can see some of their cool design and everything they do here. So let’s get to books. You know some of your favorite books. This could be I mean we’ll talk about some business books but there’s leadership books because I know you are deep into basketball as well.
I’d love to hear.
Dale Castro: 31:13
Yeah. Let me pull up my my app here. We were talking earlier and yes, a, a lot of books that I’ve been listening to. I love to in the mornings, either run or walk. So that’s been great for me.
But, you know, books that really have hit me, I would say on my list currently, right now I’m reading Ego Is the Enemy, which is definitely hitting home for in a lot of different ways. But some of the books that I wanted to mention as well too, that really impacted me. Playing to Win is great as well too. That’s by Roger L Martin. Also, The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest is great as well too.
You know, this book is was for me in my life at a time, probably a couple of years ago really resonated with me. Is called Living Untethered by Michael A. Singer as well too. And for all you entrepreneurs out there, I definitely recommend that you pick up the book Ikigai by Hector Garcia as well too. I, I love a lot of books. The book that I’m reading right now from Ryan Holiday is Ego Is the Enemy. And so being an entrepreneur and being in this game since 1996.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:39
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. Is that the one?
Dale Castro: 32:43
That’s the one.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:44
Alright.
Dale Castro: 32:44
Yeah. And that’s something that, you know, it resonates with me as well too. My wife actually has families from Japan as well too. We just went to Japan as well a couple months ago, and they really do live by that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:59
And have you ever checked out the blue zones? The blue zones. So yeah. So I don’t know if that’s in the same sentiments. I’ll have to get this book from your recommendation actually.
But the blue zones, there’s several zones in the world that people are more likely to live to over 100. There’s one in Japan, in In California, Costa Rica, I think Italy, Greece. So yeah, I’ll have to check this out.
Dale Castro: 33:24
Yeah, the blue zone is interesting. There is a correlation between those because it’s just it’s just the way that the feeling, the culture, you know, even in the blue zone. Right. It’s just or Ikigai. It’s it’s it’s eating to I believe it’s like 80% full. And so it’s being, being content in the way of understanding that, you know, what you’re putting into your body on the blue zone was interesting as well too, is just talking about they’re not out there exercising. These are older individuals, like in Okinawa, where the elderly are active in the way, where they’re planting their own food, where they’re walking to get something out of a marketplace. And so they’re constantly squatting and bending over. These are things that are not like they’re taking classes. This is part of their life.
Also stress, you know, that the stress of understanding, you know what’s important, how to digest that, those thoughts as well too, and how to handle it, and then community as well too. So having been in Japan and experiencing that firsthand, it’s you literally feel like if you’re in a countryside more in the countryside and you feel that in the air because there’s a utmost respect for each other’s, I would say bubble in your own personal space. And then also just understanding and being aware of everybody that’s around you. There’s a certain respect. And so that book was great for me because, you know, when you’re building a business, we are all coming from the grind mode, you know, the grind culture where you have to just get it done and the person that works the hardest basically will win.
And we all know that’s false, that even, you know, that even translates to when I’m reading right now. And ego is the enemy as well too, you know? That’s those greatnesses are in the weak, the weak moments and the strong moments as well too. And so that’s something that definitely this book was something that I searched out because I don’t think any algorithm would give it to me because I wouldn’t have wanted to see it. Having a book title that says ego is the enemy is really you have to be in a certain place to be willing. And that’s where I am right now, is willing to really how if I want to be the greatest version of myself, how do I really look within? And so this book has really been able to open that up and share ideas with myself and challenge myself. So that’s been really great.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:00
Yeah, Ryan Holiday has a bunch of great books, by the way, so check out Ego Is the Enemy. I saw him speak live and I’ve actually we did an event and he actually him and his wife came to the event. It was just a small group event. Super nice guy. Really smart. But thank you. I just bought ikigai. Thanks for that recommendation. And since you’re a basketball coach, I know we have another just 30s. I was looking up favorite basketball books of all time. Phil Jackson’s Eleven Rings is one of my favorites. And Tim Grover’s Relentless. He coached Kobe and Michael Jordan, among others. I don’t know, do you have any favorite, like, basketball type of books or.
Dale Castro: 36:41
Yeah. I mean, what, Eleven Rings I mean, I have that Phil Jackson and, you know, it’s it’s amazing being a basketball coach because I always correlated into building. If you being a coach and owning a company is there’s so many connection points there. But at the end of the day, what I learned from the basketball is like, you have to earn the trust of your players.
You have to build that that culture, build that culture of winning as well too, and being able to communicate because just Just because you know how to win doesn’t mean that your people understand how you want to win. And sometimes it’s not about a lot of times it’s not about you. So that’s been something through my years of coaching that I’ve really been able to grab on to. And I, you know, I think has really been a true positive outcome for our company and our culture.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:34
Love it. Dale, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Everyone can check out their site and what they’re doing over at overlapinteractive.com. I appreciate it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:36
This is Dr. Jeremy Weisz here. This is great people great resources and Esther Kiss we have borntoinfluence.com. You can check her out there. And Esther tell people about your company and what you do. Before we get to she’s going to share some of her favorite software, some of her favorite tools, and some of her favorite books. We’ll get into it. But first, start off with what you do.
Esther Kiss: 38:07
Thank you. Well, what I do is I specialize in working with experts, subject matter experts and service based professionals who want to build their personal brand and they want to get featured in the media. So what we do for them is we help them get featured in traditional media, meaning TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, a lot of the business publications like Forbes and Entrepreneur, and then also online media, podcasts, YouTube shows, Facebook live interviews, LinkedIn lives, even some speaking gigs. In some cases, it just depends on what makes sense for them and their business.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:41
How’d you get into that?
Esther Kiss: 38:43
I had a podcast a long time ago and that was the whole thing. I discovered this whole world of online coaches and experts and I wanted to play there. My background is in marketing, and so we had this really good idea with a friend of mine to start a podcast thinking that if we interview people who are real thought leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk and Perry Marshall and people of that caliber, we give them an audience and then build those relationships. And I had no idea what the offer would be. I just knew that I needed to connect with people. And as we did that, every time we recorded an interview at the end, I would ask that, hey, I know you have this book coming out or you have this event. Would you like to be on some other shows as well? And they always said yes. So we started connecting them and it became this full service PR agency. We’ve been doing this for 13 years now.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:31
I love it. As you know, I’m a huge proponent of podcasting, so I love it. And it leads to a lot of amazing relationships and business opportunities. So let’s talk about some of your favorite books. Obviously you can see we’re on the screen here, Ryan Levesque. I’ve had him on the podcast. You’ve helped him. He’s got some great books as well. What are some of your favorites?
Esther Kiss: 39:55
Well, I really like Ryan’s book as well. He has two books, Ask and Choose. One that I really, really like, that I remember made a very big impression on me years and years ago. Was Never Eat Alone.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:08
And that’s a great one.
Esther Kiss: 40:11
I remember reading that part. This was before social media. Probably like 2420. I want to say like 2009 ten, something like that. I was reading it and he had something there where he shared a story that he has 5000 contacts in his BlackBerry. Remember those phones with the button?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:26
I had one of those. Yeah.
Esther Kiss: 40:28
I thought, oh my God. Because I was back in the Nokia days where you could have 100 contacts in your phone. I’m like 5000. That’s my goal. That’s what I need to do. I had no idea why, but that kind of inspired me to to go down this path, to really take building relationships very seriously. And I have to say that that’s what gave a really solid foundation to our business as well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:49
Any other favorites? You know, you mentioned? Never Eat Alone and Tahl Raz is the co-author of that book. And so one of my favorites is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. And Tahl Raz is also the co-author of that one.
Esther Kiss: 41:06
Nice. I have that book, but I have yet to read it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:08
Oh it’s fantastic. I’ll send you the Cliff notes version because I did an interview with Chris on the podcast. It’s so it’s an hour. I’ll give you a taste of what’s in the book.
Esther Kiss: 41:16
That’s good.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:17
Any other favorites? Because I know you’re always, you know, helping people. Also, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk has a video on your website as well. And he’s got a lot of books as well.
Esther Kiss: 41:27
Yeah, yeah, I like Gary’s books too, but one that really stands out to me is a book by Harry Beckwith. I’m blanking on the title right now, but it’s it has to do with understanding personal branding. And like, for example, if you go to a doctor and you’re not medically trained yourself, you really can’t tell whether or not that person is.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:49
It is Selling the Invisible?
Esther Kiss: 41:51
Selling the Invisible. That’s it. Okay.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:53
If that. He’s got a couple here actually.
Esther Kiss: 41:57
Yeah. So so his philosophy is how you present yourself to educate your ideal clients or your prospects, your target market before they come to have a conversation with you is really where the sale happens, because they are. If they don’t have expertise in your area of expertise, there is no way that they could tell who is really the best provider. So it really comes down to communication skills on that. And then the other thing that I really like about it is, of course, PR he talks about using PR to really be top of mind and build brand awareness and really get in front of the right people.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:32
Yeah. Thanks for I mean, I’m actually looking I’m gonna have to get these faster. So Selling the Invisible. He’s got you ink. He’s got the invisible touch on thinking there’s a there’s a bunch here. Yeah, actually. And they what clients love is another one. All right. That’s next on my list. Thank you. Now software some of your favorite software tools.
Esther Kiss: 42:55
I recently started diving into AI. Like of course we’ve been using ChatGPT and kind of basic stuff, but for visual communications, I’ve ignored my Instagram for like five years because I just can’t be bothered with taking pictures. You know, selfies all the time. And so I discovered this whole method of creating your so-called AI twin, right where it really looks like you. But I didn’t want to touch that path for a long time, because the pictures that I saw from others were really bad quality.
Like, you could really tell that it’s an AI with those, you know, rubbery kind of texture and the skin and wrinkles and all that. But I discovered this. If you go into a Fal AI for AI for AI, it’s an aggregator. And within that you use the module or the software that they have flux, Laura. And you train it on your own pictures. This is what I’ve done for myself. I uploaded like 2530 pictures there with different angles, different lighting, etc.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:54
Is this the one right here?
Esther Kiss: 43:55
Yes, that’s the one. And you go into the Flux Laura section. It creates an avatar for you. Then you take inspiration pictures of what you want to have. Like a picture of you with that, right?
So let’s say you go to Pinterest or whatever where you like somebody’s picture, take that, put it into ChatGPT. And then in ChatGPT, I have a really long prompt that I give it to describe that picture. So it gives a verbal prompt, and then I take that prompt and take it into flux, Laura, and tell it to apply that to my avatar, that it trained on my image.
So it basically recreates pretty much that initial image, but with me in it. Right. And then if I want to take something very specific and switch it out, like, let’s just say I don’t like the outfit or the shoes or whatever, then I can go and use Nano Banana, which really works well with this too. So all of that combined, plus ChatGPT for the written part of it, it just made content creation so much more easy than than it used to be.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:54
Here’s Nano Banana right here. This is what you’re referring to.
Esther Kiss: 44:57
Yeah, I actually use nano banana inside Higgsfield. You can also use it inside fly. But for me at least a lot of times it fails when I try to generate a picture with nano banana. So Higgsfield works for me better.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:11
What is it called?
Esther Kiss: 45:12
Higgs field? Higgs? F I e l d.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:18
Very cool. Any other productivity tools that you like to use? Because I know you’re in probably an email a lot.
Esther Kiss: 45:24
I do a lot of emails, yes. So one thing that I always like to use is a Streak. It’s streak.com. It’s an extension for Gmail, and it lets you track the opens on your Gmail, even if you’re sending personal emails, not newsletter style emails. So that just really helps. Like, for example, if I’m pitching a journalist for a client, if I see that they opened it five times, I’m going to follow up differently than if they haven’t opened it at all. Right. And the same thing goes for prospects.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:48
This right.
Esther Kiss: 45:48
Here.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:50
Yeah.
Esther Kiss: 45:51
And that one I’ve been using for over ten years. It works really, really well. Another one is just a function inside Gmail. It’s the snooze button. So if I if I send an email to somebody, I just automatically assume that they’re not going to respond, even though they do most of the time. So I put on the snooze button there that, hey, I need to follow up with this person in a week or in three days or whatever. And at that time, whichever time I pick, it will come back into my inbox. It also helps with if I want to watch somebody’s video or like check out a course or something, but I can do it right this minute. I put it for the weekend or whenever. I think I’ll have time, and it will come back to my inbox at that time.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:30
I love it. Esther, I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone can check out borntoinfluence.com to learn more and we’ll see you next time. Esther thanks so much.
Esther Kiss: 46:40
Thank you so much.
