Stop Sending Cold Messages: Cortland Brennan on Outbound Video That Books Calls

0:00 · – Introduction & Welcome

Jordan:0:02
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] Podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner known as Mr. Corlin Brennan. Corlin, how you doing today, my friend?

Cortland:0:09
Good, good Jordan, how are you?

Jordan:0:11
Fantastic man, really excited to have you on. I know you have a lot of game in regards to video B2B marketing. So I'm excited to dive in. First and foremost, what's your offer and who was it for?

0:22 · – What Is Scalable Creative & Who Do They Serve?

Cortland:0:22
Yeah, so I run a motion design studio called scalable creative. Our entire offer is really boiled down to helping marketing teams build a consistent stream of high performing video for their brand at scale. Specifically, we focus on B2B tech companies because that's what my background is. That's where I come from. I was a motion designer turned art director turned creative director in the ad tech industry here in New York for about a decade.

And so that's really who we serve. I was in the trenches of having to do more with less with a small team, trying to, yeah, build a lot of different projects for a lot of different stakeholders and really built this offer around how to help people that are in that space, specifically marketing teams. So we've been running since about 2020 and building up steam. So yeah, happy to here.

1:16 · – The Subscription Model & How Pricing Works

Jordan:1:16
Congrats on the success. What is the, what's the pricey model behind that?

Cortland:1:18
Yeah, thank you.

So what we do is we break it into, built a subscription model. The subscription model is really there because when I was working in-house as a creative director, I really needed teams that I could rely on on a continuous basis. I found personally working on that side that sometimes priority shift, overall motivation for why we're building content can change based on what C-suite is deciding.

And especially at medium-sized companies where the goalposts might be shifting, it's really helpful to have a team that can kind of shift with what those priorities are. So we have a subscription model so that we can act as a part of your marketing team as much as we possibly can. So there's three tiers to that. Essentially, the first tier works on one project at a time. Second tier is two, third tier is three. And then from there on, you can kind of decide. you know, if you need a larger add-on. it starts at around $6,000 per month within that first year, and then it kind of builds from there. Yep. Yeah, for sure.

2:24 · – Team Size & How 7 People Handle More Than Most Large Studios

Jordan:2:24
Gotcha. I think it's a start. In regards to team size, you said small earlier. Is it still small you think or has it definitely grown? Yeah.

Cortland:2:34
Our team? Yeah, I think we're relatively small in terms of numbers, but we're handling quite a bit of more clients now than we ever have. And I think that's in part thanks to the great team that we have. There's about seven of us that are working together, plus that nice layer of AI that really maximizes our abilities. I'm sure we'll get into that, but.

So yeah, think we're a relatively small team compared to other large studios, especially here in New York. but we cover a lot of ground, with, with the team that we have.

Jordan:3:13
Gotcha. Okay, cool. And then in regards to your own client acquisition system and method, I know you and I first touched on this on our first phone call. Do you mind giving some insights as to how you acquire clients? Because I think it's really cool.

3:25 · – How Cortland Gets Clients (The Strategy Nobody Talks About)

Cortland:3:25
Yeah. Thanks. You know, what's, what's funny is we've tried a lot of things out and I've kind of gone back to the first thing that I was initially doing. I've found personally since, and I think a lot of people who start businesses are in this camp that you start as technicians and you want to build a business and you're really good at your craft, but maybe you kind of suck at the rest of it, which was definitely the camp that I was in. I think I was a good motion designer.

My strength has always been in kind of sales and project management and creative direction, but I'm I'm I'm a decent, I'm a very good motion designer, but I wouldn't get, I'm not the best. So I kind of, I think the first thing I had to do is level set and figure out what my strengths were. really what I was doing is just outreach to people that I was working with previously, referrals, things like that to start as that dries up, you got to figure something else out. Right. So, what I was doing is building these kind of personalized videos towards prospects and explain to them how I think I could help them. And in the intro, I was doing it pretty rough. I was using Loom. I think a lot of people who maybe are watching this have gotten this before where you get a Loom video. Maybe it's a little personalized note towards your brand. Maybe you're even running through the brand's website so the person can see their own work in the proposal and it works a little bit better. I started doing that and right away I started getting more responses on LinkedIn. which is where most of my outbound is currently at and has continued to be. But what we've done now is we kind of built a 2.0 version of that process. So since our strength is in motion design, what we did is we built a really killer, very short, maybe one to two, one and a half minute proposal video that explains what we could do for the clients. And what we did is we built it in a way that was templatized. So...

The main structure of the video stays the same, but there are specific nods and designs that we've actually taken a few days to come up with some mockups for that specific client. And then we present it and package it up in that video. So I don't think you need to do step two to get a lot of responses. think it works just as well if you're scrappy on Loom explaining what your offer is and how you can actually add value to these brands. I think that works. It worked for me.

5:49 · – The 2.0 Version of the Outreach Video That Changed Everything

Cortland:5:49
doing it pretty low tech like that. But I have found that once we bumped it up to a more professional version of that, where it was pretty modular, can drag and drop different aspects of other clients visuals in there, the response rates started to go up. Which makes sense, right? Where a video production agency having something a little bit more high quality shared with them gives them kind of the proof. And we've also started to... create those videos for some of our clients as well in their prospecting. So it's kind of a interesting meta experience where now we're using the same sales tools we use to get our clients, to help them get more clients. But yeah, that's the thing that seemed to be the most effective for us.

Jordan:6:36
You drink your own kool-aid, as one might say.

Cortland:6:38
Exactly. It was a very meta experience. but it works. think I think people want to know that you're reaching out to them with a plan with an idea that you've thought it through. And obviously, attention spans are shrinking and more people are moving towards video. So wrapping it in some interesting video that's showing the brand their own brand and your ideas in some ways can backfire but in most cases is helpful to book the call. Yeah.

7:07 · – Why Personalized Outreach Beats Every Other Strategy

Jordan:7:07
Absolutely. Yeah. We internally utilize outbound, definitely on LinkedIn, but primarily, you know, just because you can send more emails than you can LinkedIn. And we send a personalized email with the personalized lead magnet. And yeah, you, know, the value, because obviously you're enrolling clients from it. Our clients are pretty happy. We're pretty happy. It's that, it's that personalized touch that I think is lacking with today's outbound, you know, it's a

Cortland:7:15
For sure. Yeah.

Cortland:7:28
Yeah.

Cortland:7:35
for sure.

Jordan:7:36
or hey, let's hop on a call without really providing value upfront, you know? And when you flip that button on its head, you say, hey, here's something for free and it's valuable. It's like, yeah, why would I not look at it? Right? It's for free and it's

Cortland:7:38
Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Cortland:7:46
Yeah, absolutely. And just like, I also want to like, when you do those things, like you're saying, creating value in a way that like, even if they didn't go with us, they might start thinking about their, you know, strategy a little bit differently. We also offer like a little bit of like, here's what a sample roadmap could look like based on your business. And they could just go and do that without us. Ideally they would do that with us, but like offering something up that they can take away and run with. regardless of whether it's with you. I think that establishes a lot of trust and helps them out. I learned that late, I think, but definitely suggest it for anybody who's out there. The education piece, adding value, any other podcast you listen to will tell you that, but it does work. It's incredibly helpful, yeah.

8:35 · – Give Value First Even If They Never Buy From You

Jordan:8:35
No, 100%. And yes, there are two types of people. One, I probably fall on the first category depending on what it is. So category one is they take the information and they do it themselves. Category two or B is like, I don't have time to learn this. I'm not gonna learn. I don't want to learn this. I'm gonna pay Corlin his fees. They can execute this on my behalf. There's definitely some people out there that will run with it and also pay. So I get really, I know.

Cortland:8:45
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cortland:8:55
Yeah, right. Yeah. For sure.

9:04 · – What Happens When a Prospect Steals Your Proposal Idea

Cortland:9:04
Yeah, mean, the negative end is like I have in one case built a proposal for someone and prospecting on LinkedIn and then they ghosted me and then about a week to two weeks later I saw not the same video but almost the same video out in their channel which is like, you know, offensive and also, you know, makes you feel good. You know, it landed so much so that they stole it but you know, that's a risky run.

It's part of the game, I suppose, but.

Jordan:9:36
I think Cole Gordon, not sure if you know who that is or the closers that I know. man. He essentially works at a recruiting agency in the high ticket space, the space that we live in. And he, I follow him on socials and he's always talking about like, you know, when I first got into the game, my ads were crushing and I saw other people like rip off my ads. At first I did get pissed off because I'm like, dude, be creative on your own. Like you freaking suck for stealing it. But then he kind of.

Cortland:9:39
No, who's that? No. Okay, I'll check it out.

Cortland:10:03
Yeah.

Jordan:10:03
to inspire said it's like you know what if people are stealing it that means my shit's pretty good like that means working and they think it's good and they yeah but it didn't match your point it does kind of suck that you put all the time effort energy somebody took it and just ran with it i guess

Cortland:10:08
For sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

Cortland:10:20
It's, you know, it's, it's a blessing. Like I ultimately at the end of the day, if you're working with, you know, upper management, that's good. That's comfortable doing that, then there's going to be other problems that come down the road. So it's for the best. I think the partnerships that we have now, I'm happy to say that we're, working with some teams and people and companies that are really utilizing what we're doing for the benefit of their team and their company and seeing it out in the wild is really gratifying. So it's like, yeah, if you have to stumble to make your way to some decent partnerships. think it's fine. You know, it's like it's like dating, you know, it's like, if you ultimately end up with a wonderful person, all the rest of the stuff is forgiven, you might have some chips on your shoulders. But you know, that's what it is part of life. What you gonna do?

Jordan:11:04
That's really funny. I'm glad you broke it down like that. you know your metric out of curiosity? Or do you track metrics on that later?

11:13 · – The Metric That Matters Most: 50% More Booked Calls From Video

Cortland:11:13
We do the thing. so basically the, metric that we're. We're we track the most is booked calls and everything else kind of falls below that priority. but I would say that like, it's around 50 % more people were booking calls when we send the video. If we just send a message, it's like, we don't hear from them. We follow up, we send a capabilities deck.

We do all the things that people can easily ignore on LinkedIn, but we'll get a response from the video. If it's not like, if we don't get the call, someone's saying, hey, this was really cool. We're going to keep you in mind. Thanks for sending this X, Y, and Z. But it's a very decent percentage of people who are opening these things, watching it, and getting back in touch with us. it's, yeah, highly recommend it.

And I don't know if I can, I have like a clean version of the template that I could share if I can share on this. I'm not sure about your.

Jordan:12:19
Editor, edit this. I actually don't know if you can, brother. Can you look at the bottom? Can you hit?

Cortland:12:23
Okay. I know there is a share, but in terms of your workflow, like if you, if your editor is can, can share it on screen, I do have a mock-up. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Sick. We move over to, yeah. Add a little context to the situation.

Jordan:12:33
They can't. Yeah. So if you have to, you see the share, but at the bottom, gotta go for it.

Jordan:12:44
I think visuals are definitely important for understanding things.

Cortland:12:48
Yeah, for sure. Cool. All right. So do you want me to just free reframe it before we jump in so that there's context for the edit? Okay, cool. So just to break down the idea behind how we're actually presenting these prospecting videos is we're really starting with, this is the general framework of how these videos look. And I'll break down kind of scene by scene of what

Jordan:13:00
Yeah, go for it.

13:17 · – Breaking Down the Prospecting Video Scene by Scene

Cortland:13:17
what the flow of the story will be and how we're embedding these mockups to show the clients what their brand could look like in video. And we're typically targeting people who have a strong brand presence, medium sized companies. that's in my mind, medium sized companies are, you know, somewhere around not the beginning stages of startups where they have no brand guidelines and have no consistency. but typically we're not getting as much value out of partnering with companies that are really established and been around for a long time. So without talking about revenue or headcount, those are how we're kind of bucketing those two. So really good design references, strong design, maybe have a little bit of video, but not a lot, and don't really know how to translate it in that space. That seems to be our sweet spot of the teams that we can help the most. So what we do is in the intro, we, show our logo flash with their logo. So we embed that in as kind of a variable. And then the hook is really how many more leads would your brand attract if you were consistently building video across LinkedIn, connected TV and YouTube. So in this hook, what we're doing is we're replacing the fake logo here with their logo. And then we're building three mockups. The three mockups are going to be a case study video, a podcast video, and then a product video.

Those three mockups, which are really only around 20 seconds long, get repurposed in this spot a few times. So we show it in LinkedIn. What we're doing is we're updating brand colors, the actual template platform, logos, fonts, based on just reviewing their website. Then we're saying, you could be on YouTube. We're flashing a podcast view. Again, we're gonna rebrand it in their colors. and then saying, you know, this could also live on your website. So we're looking at, you know, creating a mock-up where we're adding the proposed mock-up within their website. And then we're kind of going to a scene that explains what we do in our capabilities. We concept, script design, and do the full video production. And then we kind of walk through why the case study would work for them, why podcasting would work, and what we can do for their product video. So.

15:28 · – How the Template System Works Without Feeling Like a Template

Cortland:15:28
This video is already recorded. It's already built. It's really nicely designed, has beautiful motion. And then all we have to do is take about a half a day to build out these, you know, these three 22nd to 32nd mockups for the brand, pop them in the video, replace the logos, and then send it out. So, what we do is we just built a system for saying, here's our list of prospects. Here are the videos we'd have to create to send and repopulate this video. And here's the timeframe in which we think we can handle that. And these Sales projects just happen on the back burner when we're working on client projects. So in any given month, we're probably building about, I think last month we built about five of these. So it's not a crazy lift, but we're not getting a wild output right now. But it's all because we don't want to scale too quickly because our team, I want to be really conscious of the talent that we get. I think.

You could pour gasoline on this and the output could be 15 or 20. If you really wanted to go, you know, full throttle with it, you could also dial back to complexity of what you're doing here. But building a templatized framework of what your story is, and then just replacing the examples for the client per client is a pretty simple way to, you know, create something that would be really moving for the recipient of this.

16:48 · – Do You Build the Video Before or After They Say Yes?

Jordan:16:48
Absolutely. No, thank you so much for showing this us showing that I have a question. Are you saying in your outbound messages, Hey, we already built a video for X for ABC company or wait, are you saying we already built it? And then once they say yes, you build it after they say yes, or is the video already built? And then you say, Hey, we already built this video and then you send it.

Cortland:16:50
Yeah, for sure.

17:11 · – Why Cortland Only Sends This to Warm Leads

Cortland:17:11
That's a good question. Typically what I'm doing is I'm I'm already I've already had like a I do this for warm leads because it takes a half a day to a day to produce and re edit this. I want to be conscious of our time and be realistic about I'm only going to build this if I if I know that there's a let's say 30 % chance that this is going to lead to a conversation. And typically that means I've already reached out to them on LinkedIn. I've already commented on a couple of their videos, or I have some kind of pre-existing relationship and I haven't heard from them in a while or something like that. So yeah, this isn't cold, although I'm sure it would work just as well if not better cold, but typically I'm having a conversation with someone and then I say, hey, I think this is the way that we could help you. There's a short video I wanna share with you. It's a minute long. Take a look. If this feels like the right time and the right fit and the right size, what you're looking for, give me a shout. This is where you can find me X, Y, and Z.

But yeah, my sales cycle is like slow and not slow, but like I don't want to scare people. I'm not trying to jump in first. I connect with you on LinkedIn and right away send you a video. I'll connect with you on LinkedIn. I'm not asking for anything. I say, you know, Hey, I'm Cortland. I'm an ex creative director in ad tech turned studio owner wanted to connect. So they know there might be some intention there. They know that I've been in the space for a while and then I'm doing something slightly different from that. So that primes them to think, okay, this could be someone who just wants to connect with me. This could be somebody who might be able to help me or work with me in the future. But I leave it more open-ended. And then if there's a conversation that happens from there, then I'll hit them with this and then we can jump on a call. But I've tried it all different ways and I still will send this cold as well to see how it's working. But typically it works better if, yeah, it's a little warm.

19:06 · – How to Automate the Outreach Video Process

Jordan:19:06
Got you. Okay, cool. Yeah, because we in our emails, we essentially like kind of not state the problem, but say something really personalized to the company. And then the second line is, Hey, we built this lead magnet for ABC company. Want me to send it over saying kind of like, Emphasizing that we already, we already created it. But again, like we can template that a little bit. And then we just have automation in the background that create the lead magnet and then send it. Thank God we can.

Cortland:19:20
Yeah. Yeah.

Cortland:19:30
Totally.

Jordan:19:35
You know, that can be automated, but building a video that takes half a day saying that you already built it. Like, and you get a lot of replies. Like you said, your team, your time is going to be crushed.

Cortland:19:37
For sure.

Cortland:19:43
Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. the thing is too, like that's why we qualify it. It's like, if I know the conversation is going to go someplace, then I'll say to the team, okay, we have another one. This is going to take priority. I think I can talk to them next week. Let's get it going. But yeah, typically works better with some other kind of first step before you jump right in. And like you're saying, if I'm saying, Hey, I've thought about this, I built a video for you without an initial conversation. then they're like, let's see. Yeah, I don't have to talk to a person. I can get the idea. It might look interesting. I see my brand. Like those are all the things you want to have as someone who is potentially thinking of buying something like not everybody wants to get on the phone. And I understand that. And I can appreciate that. Everybody's busy.

20:32 · – Can This Entire System Be Fully Automated?

Jordan:20:32
Have you thought about automating this? Is there a way to automate this?

Cortland:20:38
Yeah, so that's what we're doing now is you've jumped right to the next step is like now we're taking it each time that this works. We're trying to think, OK, what can we do to take it a step further? And all the video mocks that are mockups within the proposal are relatively templatized. So, you know, and I also preface the conversation when we get to the kickoff call. Hey, everything that you saw there, although it could have been a little templatized if that comes up.

It's just to get our foot in the door. We come ready with frameworks, not templates. So everything's going to be custom, but we do have a system to make the stuff at scale in a way that represents the brand, gets the idea across, and still aligns with whatever timeline you have, whether it's aggressive or not. Which I think is helpful to clarify. Nobody wants to just be part of a video template and slap your logo on. If you want to do that, you can go to Vimeo. No shade on Vimeo, but that's just like, that's not what we do.

Jordan:21:24
I love it.

Jordan:21:37
No, for sure, for sure. Anything else that you want to show us with the board you have up?

Cortland:21:44
I have some notes on like AI and other workflows that we're doing. but nothing on this. If we jump into AI after I can pull this up after as well.

21:54 · – How Cortland's Team Uses AI Across Every Stage of Production

Jordan:21:54
For sure. Yeah, we can definitely dive into AI. Why not?

Cortland:21:58
Cool. Yeah, that sounds good.

Jordan:22:01
I guess, easy question for you. For workflows, how do you guys utilize them entirely? What LLM do you use? All that fun stuff.

Cortland:22:07
Yeah, I mean, I think.

Yeah. So, and I think this is like the maybe number three question that comes up in intro calls is like how you got, how we're using AI. I everyone seems to want to know that. and I think it's helpful to have a can to answer, when you're doing these calls, not just because it is answering their question, but because I think a lot of marketing teams have, a motivation to use budget towards AI. There's a lot of, you know, each team seems to say, Hey, We have anything that's connected to AI. want to invest in that. We want to make things work a little bit faster, smoother, whatever. So saying that on the upfront, I do think helps scratch that itch of some clients. So yeah, let me pull that up.

22:57 · – Why Cortland Paused Cold Email & Went All In on LinkedIn

Jordan:22:57
then I see you only getting back to outbound while you pull that up. Do you only utilize LinkedIn for outbound? No email at all.

Cortland:23:05
so I, I paused on email, about six months ago to focus a hundred percent on LinkedIn. not because it wasn't working, but just because in terms of the flow, my personal sales flow of the way that I like to work, it was easier for me to have more control of the process. and I say that because we were using, an external agency to help us with outbound email and it was working like we were getting clients. but it was just not working at the rate. that we were hoping for. So we kind of paused on that. I think we'll go back or maybe invest some time in building our own internal systems for Outbound, like using instantly and things like that. But I think just for the way that our team currently works, just focusing on LinkedIn right now has been working the best. So we're just kind of moving back into that camp. yeah, I'm a fan of cold email. I know it works because it works for me. I've been sold on things through email.

I keep a folder in my Gmail like I think a lot of people do of, you know, potential future vendors to use and things like that. So I'm not against it, but just for us personally, LinkedIn has been the best place to go.

Jordan:24:15
For sure, for sure.

Cortland:24:16
Cool, let me pull this up.

24:21 · – The Full AI Workflow Breakdown (Pre-Production to Delivery)

Cortland:24:21
All right, great. scale this in. So I think the way that we're thinking about AI is really, is really, you know, it's not taking over our entire process. There's, I don't believe that AI is at a place now where we're prompting entire videos that are satisfying what the client needs. But what I will say is that there is a layer of AI on pretty much every step of our workflow. So if you see on the left here, the top bar is pre-production. A lot of what we're doing with pre-production,

Jordan:24:28
And a good end.

24:53 · – How Notion Automates Every New Project From Day One

Cortland:24:53
that we're utilizing UI or AI is we use all project management in Notion. And there's so many amazing AI tools within just Notion alone that you could talk about basically the entire day. But in terms of production scheduling, who's going to be working on the project based on the project type, know, populating specific subfolders of what you need for each project, like scripts, storyboards, know, video folders like that.

All of that is being automated through Notion. So as soon as we start a new project, there's no project management time whatsoever, like built into the setup. And then we're using a lot of chat GPT for script writing, script reviews, things like that, transcribing previously built videos that we need to break down into shorts, things like that. And it's a combination of chat GPT and Gemini. I think the biggest lift that we've seen from AI specifically has been the combination of like all the tools that are used on art lists. I don't know if you use art lists or if people who are listening to you, but it's, I think Higgs field is the other one, but it's basically like, a website that just allows you to use every possible AI tool that you need for both video sound and, image generation. And we are using that constantly. We have the highest subscription tier we could possibly have on art lists, because of the amount of videos and images we're generating there, but.

Because we're motion designers, it's not, it's not prompting and creating the entire video is just used as assets within the larger motion graphic piece. And I think that has been the best use case because, you know, people are very prime to look for spot AI pointed out and say, Hey, that looks like AI. If you use it, you know, consciously in a smaller way, that's part of a larger. image, larger composition or larger story where it's not the only focus, it can work just as well as any other stock image or better. So I think we're really using it in that way, in a way that strengthens the piece rather than becomes the entire video. And we found a lot of value in that.

26:00 · – Using AI Image Generation Without It Looking Like AI

Jordan:27:06
Really quick on that note, the key or the secret behind utilizing AI and content, script writing, or creating actual images or videos is to make sure it doesn't look like AI. That's kind of the secret. So you can use it. Just make sure it doesn't look like AI generated this.

Cortland:27:20
Yeah, exactly.

27:25 · – The Right Way to Use AI Assets Inside Motion Graphics

Cortland:27:25
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And I think a use case for that is like, let's say we're designing a scene that's explaining, it's breaking down how a product works. And there's data points that are explaining a dataset within a product. And each data point is actually representing a person. And those data points flip and there's images of people and they're in their homes and there's different locations or... we want to match cut one scene from the next and there's not going to be any stock photo that's going to do exactly what you want it to do. Taking the time and really building out those images with AI, using them in an overall larger motion graphic scene where it's not the main focus can be really powerful. But if you were to just use this, come up with the same idea for a video and try to prompt that entire thing with any kind of AI tool, it's going to look odd. You're also not going be able to revise it.

I think there's like, there's an appetite for nuance that these clients and partners have that chat GPT, nano banana, they can't really fix and refine and tweak and move forward. But if it's a small piece of a larger composition, it works great. So I don't think people need to be afraid yet. I don't think it's possible it will come and take over everything but for the next foreseeable future. think it's done nothing but help our team.

28:51 · – Where AI Has the Least Influence in Their Process

Jordan:28:51
Agreed, agreed upon.

Cortland:28:53
And then if we go into animation, I think this is probably the piece where AI is the least influenced into our process. Just because like I said, the team members that we're working with are so good and that's really their craft that that's their strength. But the big piece that we do use constantly is chat GPT for expressions for animation. It's like anything if you're And for people who don't know what expressions are, it's just the After Effects is animation tool that's built on Python and expressions are the ability to use code to animate a complex animation instead of going through and manually doing it. if you don't, if you know there's an expression out there that can help you with the complex animation, but you don't know what it is, Chap GPT is incredible for that. It'll help you break down how you can build complex animations with expressions and use that almost every single day. And then for sound design, Again, Artlist has incredible sound effects. You can build a soundtrack with AI based on a similar sound, creating like tones for logo animations. It's wild. think we used to have to go to so many different places to get this stuff done, bring in more people. I just think it's sped up the process of creating this stuff to an exponential level.

29:52 · – Why AI Voiceover Has Almost Replaced Real Voiceover Artists

Jordan:29:52
Crazy.

Cortland:30:15
But I will say it makes me a little sad for voiceover artists because we're using almost exclusively AI for voiceover right now and have relationships with a lot of amazing voiceover artists that we just haven't tapped into in the last year because the voiceovers, AI voiceovers are getting so good. I think in job disruption, would say developers and voiceover artists as the teams that I'm connected to, those are the areas that...

Yeah, I really taking a dig.

30:47 · – ChatGPT vs Claude: Which One Actually Helps You Grow?

Jordan:30:47
for sure. On the topic of chat GBT, I know they just released a 5.5 or 5.5. I use Claude Opus 4.7 madly in love because of code and everything. What are your thoughts on the new the newest model of chat? Have you seen an exponential difference between answers, output speed, all that fun stuff?

Cortland:30:50
Mm-hmm.

Cortland:30:54
yeah.

Cortland:30:58
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

31:08 · – Why ChatGPT Is Too Agreeable to Be a Real Creative Partner

Cortland:31:08
I mean, I haven't seen a huge difference from the last version that I've been using, but also, you know, we're using ChatGPT really for editing long form scripts into shorts. Also reviewing scripts that we've written for editing purposes. I try not to spend too much time on ChatGPT just because it's so agreeable. You know, I feel like when I'm working with someone like a writing partner, I want some friction. I want someone to say that line maybe could be tweaked. If I say, here's my script, what can I do to edit it? Chad GPT is like, oh my God, this is an incredible script, great foundation. I could tell that you're a seasoned writer. I've actually told Chad GPT, don't be so agreeable.

Jordan:31:54
It's not that.

Jordan:32:03
you

Cortland:32:06
And I've yeah, I have have chat GPT folders that are like borderline angry at me when I when they respond because I've so I've been so like, do not, you know, stroke my ego at all in these conversations. It's a waste of time and processing power. But that's my grip with chat GPT. I'm sure it'll update to not be as well. Maybe it won't. I don't know. But. Oh, yeah.

Jordan:32:28
That's fucking funny man because that's another reason why I moved over away from chat to claw because chat is your best friend dude it will put you on a pedestal it is it views you as a king and it's like you're not helping me grow at all like

32:29 · – The Walkie Talkie Trick That Makes AI Conversations Actually Work

Cortland:32:36
Too much. I... I hate it.

Not at all. Like I don't need that. I need some constructive criticism in a way that's going to help me finish the project. I don't need to be praised for asking a wonderful question. So yeah, it's, it's a bit, it's a bit frustrating. But I will say that I, lot of times when I'm in terms of business development, I go for long walks with my dog and I do talk to Chad GPT through like sales processes, expanding the team, things like that.

Jordan:32:46
Yeah.

Cortland:33:12
And even though it is very agreeable, just having a soundboard to kind of come up with ideas and things like that, I actually think it's pretty helpful. So it's a bit weird. I think when I told my wife that when I go for walks with the dog, I'm talking to the computer, I think it scared her a little bit, but as it should, but it's incredibly helpful. Yeah.

Jordan:33:35
husband lost his mind.

Cortland:33:37
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, it's like before that I was just talking to myself so I'm not sure which is worse. Yeah, both are bad. Yeah.

Jordan:33:42
I'll save you. But honestly, I think geniuses are crazy the other way. I mean, that is a whole different topic. I think what you said, you said something vitally important. It's a sounding board. It's a thinking partner. It's not I say, hey, I do this and I have zero input or zero context into the subject. If you're utilized to think for you and act for you, you're failed. It's not going to work at the highest level that it could.

Cortland:33:56
Yeah, exactly.

34:03 · – How to Use AI as a Thinking Partner, Not a Yes Machine

Cortland:34:03
Yeah, totally.

Sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jordan:34:12
I think sounding board or thinking partner is the not the only way, but the best way to utilize AI in my opinion.

Cortland:34:17
I think so for sure. And even in these prospecting conversation, if I'm thinking about, this is a client that I'm know I'm talking to on LinkedIn, but I haven't done too much research and I go for a walk. I will ask financial questions too. is there any public information that you can tell me about the size of this company that will lead me to understand relatively what their marketing spend might be? Like that's not something that I'm going to access by talking to myself, walking around the park. I'm going to get nothing but angry, you know, interest. dirty looks from passersby, but with Chachibet, they'll be like, okay, there actually is public records. They're in a series B, which means that round was for X number of dollars. And then you can go one step further and think, okay, typically what does that mean for marketing budgets? Is it 10 %? Is it 3 %? Whatever that number is. It's not gonna be right, but it'll give you an idea of kind of what you're working with. And if that company is ready to even engage with you.

I think that is incredibly helpful. It's like having a writing partner, business partner, personal assistant who has access to that information. And I do think that's super helpful if you can get by all the praise you're gonna get back for asking the question to begin with, yeah.

35:32 · – Using AI to Research Client Budgets Before the Sales Call

Jordan:35:32
Yeah. On that topic, and then we can shift gears momentarily. I have trained Claude, like at the very top, typically whatever, at your prompt. Typically the AI looks at the very first couple of things and the last few things, right? Everything in the middle, like we'll look at, but it doesn't take it as important as the first and last thing. There are essentially markdown files you can create that always live inside your prompt. And this is for Claude code specifically. I'm sure it works very similar for for Codex, which is chat. nonetheless, I have put in challenge every idea that I have, like agree with it, but challenge like if you actually think this could improve and like now every, every time it has an output, it's like, this is good, but like that's good. But I'm like, good, good.

Cortland:36:07
That's a good one. Yeah.

Cortland:36:17
Yeah, yeah. And then you're starting to get into the don't agree with me kind of framework as well. Yeah, it's good. They learn and they can be trained on like what you're what you're actually trying to do to give you better outputs. This is not as related, but another funny note on when I'm talking to chat GPT. Like she interrupts me when I'm talking every once in a while, just because like there's road noise or I'm pausing in between ideas. Right. OK. And I get frustrated with that, too. So the the new thing

Jordan:36:45
Mm-hmm.

Cortland:36:47
that I prompted was when we're talking, let's treat it like a walkie talkie and don't respond until you hear the word over. So now I'm talking and then I say over at the end of every note. And it actually works great because it's like, I will take big pauses in between ideas and they'll give ideas on responses to the initial thought, but not the whole idea. And it's helpful, but it does make me feel. but even crazier than just talking to the robot in more of a walkie talkie fashion. Yeah, it works though. It's great, it's great, yeah, it's fantastic.

Jordan:37:19
Cause that is so funny. How many live acts- I'm gonna start utilizing that man.

Because it doesn't stand me for me, just interestingly mid-sentence I'm like, I thought what's he done, you motherf***er?

Cortland:37:30
Mm hmm. Exactly. Exactly. And you never want to get frustrated at an inanimate object. Well, maybe I don't know. Maybe they have souls. We haven't figured that out yet. But yeah.

37:43 · – The End Goal for Scalable Creative: Growth, Sale, or Something Else

Jordan:37:43
That is funny. Let's see in regards to a growth and the projection for the company, I guess the end goal. If you converse engineer that what is the end goal for the company? You want to sell it one day looking to make this baby just ride it but you know ride the wave.

Cortland:37:50
Yeah. Yeah.

Cortland:37:55
Yeah.

38:00 · – Why Cortland Started With His Name on Every Box of the Org Chart

Cortland:38:00
Yeah, so I mean, I think when I initially got into it, I did have aspirations of selling the company. But they were kind of grounded in nothing. It was just like an idea. This would be nice. And when I first started, it really wasn't a company. It was just me being a freelancer, like doing whatever people wanted to getting as many clients as I could. Never sleeping. All that stuff that you don't want to do.

But as I built the team and started building systems and really actually like treating it like a proper business, that's when you start to see the growth. When it actually, when you're not wearing all the hats. So with each phase of the, of the growth, what I do is I have a, built out an org chart in the beginning of building the business and I put my name on every single step. of the org chart, right? So then as I started to grow and as I started to add more clients and I couldn't do all that stuff, I started to pick things off the org chart to replace myself with. right now I'm still acting creative director and I'm still handling all sales. But the design, the animation, you know, the project management is all handled by different people on the team. So I'm not ready to let that stuff go yet and I still really enjoy it. So I'm not trying to replace myself as a creative director. And I do think the next phase will be when, you know, get enough cashflow to hire that maybe next tier person that can replace me with what I'm doing and then reestablish how the growth will kind of change from there. Cause I do think that's the biggest thing is, you know, Nobody's going to buy a company that's held together by the founder. So once that step is done, then I can start to reevaluate. Okay, what does that look like? What would a sale look like? And right now I can't entertain that because no one's going to buy it with me connected to it. But that is the goal is to remove myself and then see, see what happens there and see what I'm building there. Am I just focusing on sales? Am I working on our content strategy and doing fun stuff that will move the needle?

40:09 · – When to Replace Yourself & What to Do After You Do

Cortland:40:09
Or am I completely out of the operator position and trying to focus on growth? So that's kind of where I'm thinking through this year is when I replace myself, what do I want to do there? And I'm still having fun with the creative direction. So it's not super pressing, but that is the goal is to get myself out of the business in the day-to-day production so I can focus on growth. Yeah.

Jordan:40:34
Sure. Same here on my end. I think it's really difficult as founders to step away from the thing that drives the most revenue, which is the asset that you're giving to your clients is the executive director aspect. Man, it is. It is because for one, it's your baby. I love what I do. If I type stuff.

Cortland:40:36
Yeah.

Cortland:40:42
Yeah.

Cortland:40:49
It's Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody can do it better than me is the feeling, the narcissistic point of view. But what I realized is like, when I started really leaning on motion designers and graphic designers and writers and project managers, like I, like they are better than me at this. You know, I think you really, once you find the right team and at the beginning they weren't, you know, they were just creating more work for me. You're, everybody's going to go through that friction of you're hiring somebody and then you got to redo the work or you're hiring somebody and you're to walk them through the process 10 times. Like that's, that could be part of it. but once you, once you get your foot in and you find people you can trust and the system starts working, that's when it starts humming and becomes more enjoyable for everybody included in the process. So, it's going to be really hard until you get there. And then once you're there, you can start to have some space and think about the strategy of what you're doing instead of just having your head down, you know, working on the projects nonstop feast and famine with sales, going on vacation with your laptop, all that stuff that nobody really wants to do. And all the stuff that I have done for years until, you know, getting to a point where I can breathe a little bit and, and trust people, which is, which is not easy to do. But, if you can do that and unlock that, then yeah, it's going to be much easier way to grow for sure.

42:16 · – The Biggest Lesson From a Decade of Running a Creative Business

Jordan:42:16
Absolutely, absolutely. No great insights there. We'll probably wrap it up here with one or two more questions. Looking back over your career as being an entrepreneur, what is one thing you wish you knew before starting?

Cortland:42:21
Sounds good.

Cortland:42:30
Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. I think I wish, I wish I had a higher appetite for risk in the beginning, and risk specifically on building a team. I think I was so focused on let's get the clients, let's maximize the profit. I'll do everything. how could I possibly afford X, Y, and Z?

If I had taken the leap earlier on building that foundation of a team, it would have been much easier to scale to this position a lot easier a lot earlier. if, if, once you, think there's an order of operations, you have to, you have to figure out your offer. You have to make sure that people want your offer and then you can build the team. So I think, you know, invest in the time that you're doing the work yourself and make sure that it fits. But once it fits, that's the time to build the team.

I've, know a lot of other people who have built studios and agencies and they build the team and then they try to figure out what they're offering and then they fail and then they can't pay people and they get discouraged and they go back to a nine to five. you know, I wouldn't encourage that, but once your offer is set and people are buying it, build out the team, replace yourself with whatever you feel comfortable with and then focus on the growth from there. But, it's easier said than done. It's everybody I talk to is in this position has a hard time letting go. the fear of the work being less than what they would produce, things like that. But, it's worth it. Yeah, for sure.

43:30 · – Why Building the Team Earlier Would Have Changed Everything

Jordan:44:04
That's great advice, man. Great advice. Where could they find you if any B2B SaaS company, which is some of our audience, where can they find you?

Cortland:44:06
Yeah.

44:11 · – Where to Find Cortland Brennan

Cortland:44:11
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Cortland Brennan, also scalable creative on LinkedIn. And you can find me on my website, scalable creative.co. You can also find me on YouTube, scalable creative as well. So yeah, reach out if you need any kind of motion design support, video strategy, or if you have too much work to produce with a team that can't make the cut, give us a call, we can help you. And if you don't want to go with us, we'll build out a beautiful roadmap that'll tell your team exactly what to do. maybe we'll see it someday on LinkedIn and and get angry about it. No, it'll be fine.

Jordan:44:46
I freaking love it man. I had so much trouble with you on the show. We'll have to have fun with you. Absolutely like 90 % the time. Yeah, yeah. be a good time. Awesome. Well audience, thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to y'all soon.

Cortland:44:48
Yeah, same. Thanks for having me. I would love that. For sure. That sounds great.

Cortland:44:58
All right, thanks again, Jordan.