Helen Polise 9:47
is it such a process? Because a lot of people just think very linearly that it’s like merch, selling merch, or selling products, or getting brand sponsorships, or they think that the views on TikTok are going to pay you just for. Your Creator Fund, which, by the way, I always share my stats on that, because I need people to know that with millions and millions of views on videos, it’s not millions and millions of dollars. It doesn’t equate that way. It’s very low. So I’m happy to disclose if you want to talk about that at any point, but it really turns into like thinking outside the box. And I will say to you that for three years, until last year, I went into the creative, fun creator fund thing. But for three years before that, I didn’t make a dime from the TikToks. But my daughter will always correct me and say, but you did, because you got work from TikTok so I got speaking engagements. That’s money that I made from social media, because I wouldn’t have had a speaking engagement if I wasn’t an expert on social media. I’m now shooting for big brands. I was in Croatia shooting Clairol TikToks, believe it or not, so I’m literally having opportunities because of my expertise. I’m being invited to do different type of production work than I was doing before. So even though, for three years, it didn’t equate dollar for dollar, like a post brought in a money, it was money that came to me from being an expert, and that is money from the platform. In my opinion, it’s just not direct. So it’s like somebody has to understand that you can put yourself out there as an expert, and your career might get a boost, and you might have a job opportunity that you didn’t even know existed. So it’s not just connecting the dots, like directly. Sometimes it’s a little bit of a winding road to connect the dots, which is what I’ve been doing for three years. So I only specifically connected the dots directly to monetizing my audience in this fourth year. So that’s crazy, actually, because
Rolando Rosas 11:31
that is crazy on that someone wants to say something on that. Another one, another one. You know, it’s so crazy, because we all have different journeys to get there. And you talked about you sometimes it doesn’t look linear. It looks like this. And had you been able to monetize, you know, let’s say in month number six, this is where I was going with this. James Orsini, who works for Gary V he says you probably wouldn’t have been able to avoid some of the potholes, right? Because you’re talking about creator funds and so many people like, I gotta hit that milestone so I can get paid. And then you realize I’m getting a penny on a million views, not Larry, but you know what?
Helen Polise 12:12
It’s 67 cents on 1000 views, is what I’m getting, point six, seven. So half a penny, yeah? Well, it’s like, I guess it’s 67 cents because it’s in my thing, it shows up point six seven. So 67 cents per 1000 views, though. And so, you know, do the math. So 10,000 views, and that gives you $6 it’s got to be qualified views. So then half of them, if it’s repeat views, if someone watches a video twice, that doesn’t count. Oh, really, yeah, there’s so much to it. It’s like so little money. So for a whole year. I’ll disclose from November 2023 to November 2024 I just looked at this recently, and I was like, Oh, $3,500 I have had multiple viral videos that have million, about more than a million views. Like, when I have 3 million views, that’s how much I made in total for the entire year from the Creator fund. What don’t you think that sounds a little like? It
Rolando Rosas 13:03
sounds low to me. That does that? That? That is, I had people guess. I had people
Helen Polise 13:07
guessing in my life the other night, and some of them thought it was 100,000 they were like, 250,000
Rolando Rosas 13:13
like, no, 3500 Oh, yeah. Hold on, Queen You are the queen bee. Queen Bee. But yeah, you know, it seems like, in a way, we’re trying to get to a point where we can live off of that, and so few people are able to accomplish that. And I know that you’re in your fourth year on doing that, and now you’ve been able to start personalizing your expertise to people, yeah, so that they can maybe guide themselves to avoiding those potholes. How’s that going so far?
Helen Polise 13:45
Okay, it’s going great, and I do attribute it to the fact that I spent all four years building trust, not asking people for money, not selling merchandise, not going into the TikTok Shop. Let me sell you something, brand deals. So my four years have been so well invested in building trust with my audience, that the minute something was available, because they’re asking me, they’re messaging to me, can I work with you privately? And I haven’t really provided a space for that, so it almost I don’t even have to sell it. And that’s the beauty of it. I can just say, Hey, I’m doing this now, and it’s so much fun because I actually love it. I go into my little studio because I have a virtual studio now, and the people are leaving me questions and comments, and I’m sharing each week like, here, everybody try this challenge, and then they post their version of it, and then they’re all helping each other. It is incredible, and it’s so organized for me that before, if I was to do this a year ago, I think I would have been overwhelmed, and I wouldn’t have understood how to do it efficiently for myself, where I could actually be helpful without being overwhelmed, and I have figured it out, and it took me a long time, but I’m okay with that
Rolando Rosas 14:49
it, and that’s the thing. You have patience. You have to be okay with the process. And you know nobody, I’m sure you can include yourself on this one. Nobody wants to hear. The word Wait, no, right? You’re from New York. You gotta go, wow. Nobody wants to wait, because hurry up and wait. Right. Hurry up and wait. Who wants to do that?
Helen Polise 15:13
Nobody. Nobody. A year ago, my daughter tried to talk me into doing this, and I said, Okay, we’ll do it. And then I just went to sleep that night, and I started to feel like I was choking, and I thought, I’m never going to be able to deliver for the people, and they’re going to pay me, and I’m not going to be able to I don’t understand. I couldn’t process the process. I could not process the process of how I was going to actually be able to deliver and help people, really, on a more personal level, until now. And it was a sequence of events that happened, and I happened to connect with a community manager expert. Her name is Mayan Gordon. She’s quite incredible, and she has built communities, and she literally, step by step, told me, here’s how it goes, so that it doesn’t debilitate your life. And I am so now determined. I’m thinking of all this time I’ve spent in the TikTok comments, answering people who aren’t paying me. I can invest half that amount of time to the people who are paying me and still feel so empowered and good about it, because they’re getting what they need. So great.
Rolando Rosas 16:09
How do you how do you know? How do you make because this is such good. These are good like bombs you’re throwing here, like you hear, you hear that. I’ve heard it on so many videos. Go ahead and comment, reply. And if you get 1020, 30 comments on something, it takes time, because, you know you’re thinking, I’m not just gonna put a heart emoji and now
Helen Polise 16:32
call it a day. Right, respond, right. So
Rolando Rosas 16:34
how do you sift through that, knowing which ones are the ones you should be okay, that’s the ones that I’m going to go through.
Helen Polise 16:40
So I’m very almost OCD about helping people. So I really scroll. And I have like a process now where in the evening and in the morning, I do the quick make sure there’s not a comment that really needs to be answered right away. Now the people that are just dropping the comments on my TikTok have already now dropped down a notch in priority compared to my paid members. So my paid members, they all get the answers. Now, on TikTok, you have paid members. No, I have paid members in my community, separate
Rolando Rosas 17:07
in your community, and you know who they are, when, when you when you see them on TikTok, it’s in a separate
Helen Polise 17:11
place, but I recognize the names, and I tell them, don’t drop anything in the comments. If you need something from me, put it into the community so I can respond. So we have a separate it’s like a separate app. It is a separate app. It’s not like it’s a separate app. It’s called metis.io it’s a community management app. And so when someone has a question, and if they tag me in the TikTok just to see it, I’ll see it, but they put the question, if they’re a paid member into the community. And then I go in there every night and I check those comments, and I respond to every single comment. It’s crazy, but I do?
Rolando Rosas 17:40
Wow. You are again, the queen bee on this one. You said something about going on site and shooting over in Europe, yeah, and I think I had seen you with this beautiful, picturesque scene. Take me behind you know, I got something that is not a problem. Take me behind the scenes. What’s that like for those folks that haven’t been on set, you know, dealing with maybe a celebrity or two or three models, and you know, there’s money you’re on set. That’s money, right? They’re spending dropping a lot of cash to put people in a very exotic location. What is that like? What’s that working with the demands on it? Besides being in a beautiful scenery, what do people don’t understand about doing that kind of thing? Okay,
Helen Polise 18:25
there’s probably a lot, because I don’t think the average person has ever been on a production set, so I come into it with a bit of an advantage, because my whole career has been in production, so I’ve been on sets. I understand the dynamics of a set. Who’s the ad? What do they have to do? Where is the prop team. How does that work? How does the communication flow? If you want to get some time with one of the talent, who do you have to ask? And I understand those protocols, because I’ve grown up with it. I’ve lived in production. I’ve been in the production business, so I come with a skill set that is very unique. So if another influencer got booked for the same job that I just did, where you’re going to come on set while they’re filming a commercial, and you’re going to be responsible for all the social media content. If someone else was to walk in, they would not know how to get what they needed from the day in a way that was not disruptive to the production process itself. And so they probably would get thrown out, because they’d think, I’m in charge here, and I’m going to come in and I’m going to just pull the talent aside whenever I feel like it, but I can read the room, so I come with an entire Helen
Rolando Rosas 19:22
just, just, just stick this in front of their face, right? I’m the Social Media queen. I can stick this in your face, right, right?
Helen Polise 19:28
And that’s not how it works, like you would not be able to so because I bring this other skill set, and it combines with me being mature enough to not think that I’m going to walk in and run the show in that moment, like I see what’s going on over here. I know what they have to get done in their production day. And so they call me the ghost, because I slink around and somehow manage to, in between the shots, get the shots I need, and then at the end of the day, I have edits that blow them away, because they’re like, when did you shoot this? So I am so so my. Bro niche in this one department right now that I’m getting booked again and again by the same ad agency, and now I just got referred to another ad agency. So the ad agencies are finding me, and they’re hearing about me. So it’s word on the street, baby.
Rolando Rosas 20:11
Word on the street is this is the ghost you need to have on set. She’s invisible. Knows how to make it happen. And I would imagine, for those folks that are experienced right in the production side of things, they can completely, they completely get that, you know, you’re not stepping all over the talent at the wrong time,
Helen Polise 20:31
right? And even when they’re in, sometimes I go into the wardrobe, the hair and makeup or wardrobe section, I’m like, I can grab some shots here, and I can tell right away not a good time someone’s being stressed about their hair and, like, you have to be able to have a read the room type of mindset in the whole thing. So even though it’s like, glam, we’re in this great, great country. We were shooting in a villa one day. It was stunning. Okay? I mean, I was like, my breath was taken away in this villa. It was like, almost like an Italian villa, but in Croatia, just fantastic. And still there’s stress involved. So it’s not just walk around and take it in and shoot whatever you want whenever you want. You still have to realize that everybody’s here to do a job. Most of these production people are working day after day in production, and they don’t even think it’s glamorous. I mean, I still think it’s kind of glam, because I don’t know, I’ve always been so passionate about production and how much I love it. But most production people, most crew people, are there to do a job, and they’re getting their, you know, their union paycheck, whatever. So you have to really just bring it down and get the job done.
Rolando Rosas 21:31
Bring it down a notch. And as you’re doing the thing, I think I saw a video where you said you slammed your face into a glass, you tripped it. You know, you’re like, you went face first, but then you talked about it, which was, you’re really, like, revealing the real, real with big, humongous cables on the floor, and you can’t really see them, and a glass you can’t see it’s, I can’t even tell you.
Helen Polise 21:53
First of all, I don’t even remember that I posted about that. But of course I would, because I have no problem. I show it all. And I think what I will say about it is, when I’m in those scenarios, I take time to make my own content that’s separate from the content I’m shooting for the brand. And I have to be careful, because these things are done six months out, so those social media pieces aren’t even airing yet, and this happened. I did that shoot in July, so I have to be mindful of what I’m sharing, but I also can do my behind the scenes thing with talent and things without showing products or without divulging anything that’s being shot. So when I was having lunch at this villa, stunning Villa table, and I was the last one to get lunch that day, and I was like, Yes, I have the whole table to myself, and I like making content for my channel to really share my perspective, which is, I do appreciate the glam of it all, and I never get over it and take it for granted. And when something goes wrong, I have no problem showing it. I felt like the biggest idiot when I whipped around this corner trying to get this shot, tripped over something, slammed into the glass. I had to put ice. They were trying to get ice in a foreign country, by the way, an
Rolando Rosas 22:52
injury. You had a you had a war story from an injury being on site. And
Helen Polise 22:59
I every time I learned something from the war stories, I’m like, next time, I’m going to make sure they know that they can’t break down a set until they check with me first, because I was trying to get to something before they broke the set. You know, that’s like, take everything down. So it was my own fault, because I should really communicate better. So I learned the hard way,
Rolando Rosas 23:18
right with the guys. You know, one production story, which was super interesting at the time, when I was in college, I was an extra on a movie that is played every Christmas with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad
Helen Polise 23:32
what? Yes, fun. That was
Rolando Rosas 23:35
fun. And so what I didn’t know, because it was new to me at the time, was that, you know, they had a big spread table with just every imaginable, really good food, but that wasn’t for the extras. There’s like a bifurcation of extras and then the real big talent, like Sinbad and Arnold and I happened to be walking by near the table, and there was a couple we were heading to another scene, and Sinbad walks in to grab something off the table. And he looks at the table, it’s a really long table. He’s like, there’s just way too much food here. We’re not this is gonna get throwing he’s like, come here. You come here, you come here. Grab off of this table, because it’s all gonna get thrown away. And it was like, a surprise, like, you know, there’s a protocol, you know? Okay, we don’t, we shouldn’t grab off that table and and that’s exactly what, what you’re saying with when you’re going on set. There’s protocols. And for the average person, they wouldn’t get that, but
Helen Polise 24:31
no, they wouldn’t know. I’ll tell you a funny story. Well, first of all, that’s called craft services. We call it crafty in the biz. So there’s client crafty and then there’s crew crafty anyway. So that’s how that flies. But we had to shoot once, and this was years and years ago, when I was shooting toys in Rome, Italy, and we were at, this is a ridiculous story that we were filming at Sophia Lorenz villa. For some ridiculous reason, we were shooting My Little Pony, and we had props, and they were props that matched the pony, the rump designs on the pony, because my little ponies have these, like rump designs that. So there was candy ponies, and so there was all these candies, unbeknownst to us. They put all these candy props on the table, and everybody thought, we can eat this candy, but it was the candy props for the shots. So we go to shoot the shots, and somebody goes over to the candy table to get the props, and the crew had eaten it because nobody knew. Nobody it was prop candy, not crafty candy. Oh, my God,
Rolando Rosas 25:26
that was, Oh, my goodness, that could be, that could be a problem. The problem
Helen Polise 25:30
got eaten. Literally, can’t make it up.
Rolando Rosas 25:34
Oh, my goodness, that that’s, that’s, I’m sure you probably are loaded with, with, with those kinds of crazy stories. And you know what? The other thing that’s crazy is that, you know, people try to figure out how to go viral, right people? You know, you could see all the different gurus and people, but you’ve managed to crack the code on that. And is there something that you could share about that that people either get wrong or what’s the first thing you should be thinking about before even shooting, if you’re trying to go viral, trying to get your your name out there on social media like
Helen Polise 26:07
that. I have so much to say about this because I just did a workshop unlock the secrets to going viral. So I’m all very fresh, but it’s also very innate. Because if you think about yourself watching videos, and I did a whole deep dive analysis. And I went through and I said, Oh, viral video. Why was that viral? And I listed why it was viral, because in the first three seconds this happened. Why is this viral? Oh, because what she said in the first two seconds was you got people hooked in, and then she followed up. So to give examples of the things that are most successfully viral, they usually hook you in the first three seconds, but they also have to deliver in the remainder. So I like to use examples that are very tangible for people listening, because if you’re on social media, and you know that recently, there was a woman who found a rug buried in her backyard, do you know the story of this one? Please, surprisingly, so she found a rug she was digging to put in a fence, and they found a rug in her backyard. And so she had this story, but she didn’t start her video saying they were digging, and they found a rug in my backyard which had blood on it. By the way, she started the story, she said, I think my house is haunted, like that’s how she started. And she was walking into a room showing people that her computer screen was cracked and how she had left here this year the night before, but now it’s here. So she’s got people so invested in this story. Not only did she have a viral video, but she had a viral video that converted people to follow, because her story was so that people didn’t want to miss the follow ups to the story. And right now, it’s very hard, even if you have a viral video, to have that convert to followers, because the algorithms are so smart that you don’t have to follow people anymore. You’re getting fed the content you like because of the nature of you scrolling. And so people don’t follow as quickly as they used to. Back when I first got on social media, somebody was like, tutorial, I better follow her. So I amassed a following at that point. Now, if you watch a tutorial, you’re likely going to get another one a few scrolls later. So you don’t have to necessarily follow people to get what you want. So when it’s a story that is so crucial to now you’re invested in it, now you’re going to hit the Follow button, and you have to take that mindset and say, Okay, I don’t have a haunted house, but how am I going to take that thinking into my content? How am I going to get someone interested in enough in the first two seconds to then stay with me? And so another trick that I love is which I again, in my analysis, starting with the end of a story. So if you are somebody that’s either a good storyteller, or you have something that’s so cool at the end, but you don’t think people are going to stick around to the end, start with it, and then your video will loop back to the beginning. So I’ll give you an example, because it’s hard to process. In words, there was a girl who was going to, I think, the middle of the country somewhere, to get a puppy that she had, but, you know, from a breeder or something. So she didn’t start her video by saying, come with me to Kansas while I go pick up my puppy. She started the video holding up this freaking cute puppy and saying, here’s how I went, blah, blah, blah, and got my puppy. And so she already hooked people in to the sort of the sweet spot ending, and then everybody wanted to see, well, what was her process? Now? So there’s all those types of and they’re not tricks. They’re just really ways of creating. It’s content strategies of how you can engage your audience in the first three seconds so they don’t scroll, but then delivering on the promise so they don’t leave and that will prompt it. And then the last part is what I said earlier. It’s whatever that content is. If people are so into it that they send it or share it or save it, it’s higher metrics than just commenting or hitting the like button. So
Rolando Rosas 29:35
I like what you said, because now I’m thinking about the metrics of YouTube, for example. We were just talking about this with our media team. We have a disproportionate amount of people that actually follow us on YouTube, on the longer stuff like so we have a bunch of educational stuff that around technology, right, and E commerce. Anytime we’ve done a really deep dive that’s 40 minutes. 20 minutes an hour, way more followers. Like you said, people get invested into it shorts, we get followers, but not in the same proportion to the views, which is interesting, because you would think the stuff that’s more viral ish, more people are HA, HA HA or Whoa. That’s an interesting nugget. You’d get more followers off of that versus, here’s what we’re gonna we’re gonna break this down today, and today we’re gonna sit down and examine a viral video and break and reverse engineer it, right? And that takes you 20 minutes, 30 minutes to do more followers like, it’s really like shifting my thinking, and now you’re confirming because we’ve been trying to understand, why is this happening? Yeah? Why? Why are we getting more followers on the long stuff, quote, more boring than the more hippie? Yeah? You know, kind of thing makes
Helen Polise 30:54
so much sense, and it is validating everything that I have in my content that is viral. So my longest, one of my first times I was able to post, like, a 10 minute video, I did a long stop motion lesson on how to do stop motion, and it was like seven minutes, which is unheard of. Who’s posting a seven minute video, especially that’s when I got hundreds of 1000s of followers. That is when I neared my million. That’s like that launched me, you know, because it was a long lesson, and people then became invested in me from my lessons. And so it was not just like a quick, oh, here’s how to do it. You know, drop the clothes, Boo Boo Boo thing. Like, it was a very detailed, like production. I became, like a production teacher for people, and that’s way more valuable for somebody to want to follow than Oh. I just learned a quick lesson from this guy who just said, Oh, this is a trending audio. Use it like this. And I noticed because I see people that do that, and when I see those people, I don’t have to follow them, because they show up on my page and again and again. If I watch that video, you know what I mean, it works on me too. It’s
Rolando Rosas 31:57
fascinating. So two things, one, the people that are going to follow now want to be invested, and they feel invested if they’ve spent 510, maybe 20 minutes or more with you, versus 30 seconds watching you jump in and out of your boots. Yeah, literally, I’ve seen your video.
Helen Polise 32:16
I love that. That was a good one. People were like, What did you save those boots from the 60s? I’m like, No, I just bought them two months ago. Everything goes around and comes back again. But, yeah, I just find it so intriguing, and I am a sponge. So when something happens, I learn from it. When something goes well, I learn from it. When something goes wrong, I also learn from it. So I’ll give you an example of the opposite thing happening, where I wasn’t something recently and it was a trend, and it was just like, was just like, share your fear about something. So I posted. I used to think my fear was heights, and now I know it’s blindness, and it was a serious music thing. And I thought people will get it, because they’ll remember when I was blind. But what happened instead is people thought I was going blind. So I was like, oh shit. So I took it down immediately, because I think that it missed the mark, and it was just missed the mark, because so many people didn’t know the trend. And when people don’t know that it’s a trend, they think you’re trying to communicate something to them. So I said, forget it. I took it down. So you really have to be I always analyze my content and say, Is this worth keeping up there if somebody’s being either misinterpreting it or misunderstanding it? And then I say, you know, then it’s not because I’m not trying to attract that type of audience to my content, and that will tend to start to go viral, things like that. So I have to, I’m really conscious, so
Rolando Rosas 33:30
you really have to, also sounds like you have to pay attention to the metrics, some of the analytics, understanding somehow your audience also where you’re going. So learning is always part of growing. And I think when you and I last talked a couple months ago, one of the things if you could share, because learning is really important to me, and I’m sure a lot of people that are listening to us, that you had participated in a TikTok study of sorts I did, and it was really eye opening. Could you share anything? Can you shed some light. What can we glean from what you experienced? Oh, so let me just
Helen Polise 34:04
think of how, because I was also in I was contacted by some PR companies at the same time, but they’re collecting data from creators now, which I think is saying a lot about the company. They’re trying to get information. How are you using it? How has it been most beneficial? How have you monetized? So it became informational for them. I was excited to be chosen because I am not a verified creator, and I’ve thought, well, obviously they’re watching my content because they picked me. There was people from the company, TikTok on the call. I could see the emails. So it wasn’t just a separate company. It was fully vetted. And I just learned a lot, because I realize how massive the organization is, that they have all pockets within that are trying to solve and make the place better. So even though you think, Oh, they’re not really caring about us as creators, no, they actually are, they’re conducting all these studies to try and find the answers. They’re trying to figure out how they can and they’re also trying to collect. Collect data for governmental reasons, so that they can promise sure, you know, battle what’s coming, where they’re saying they’re gonna ban think, I don’t think
Rolando Rosas 35:06
that’s going away. I don’t think it’s, you know, it’s just the two cents, my two cents on what that is. You know, all social media, all the big ones that are American companies, collect data on its users, and all of them use it for profit, yeah, including TikTok And so Google even. They’re not really social media, but they as much, if not much, information on all of our data. And it’s interesting that they are being singled out. I’ve seen all the quote national security reasons, but all these other social media companies, I’d love to talk to some meta guys gals and do that, and just just put the cards on the table, because I don’t think they’re going away. There’s, there’s, there’s obvious. I think there’s some other motives behind that, probably bringing them underneath the same national security umbrella as all those other players are, and I think at the heart of it is that maybe the government can’t collect all the data like they do from meta and Google and everybody else here in the US.
Helen Polise 36:14
What you’re saying makes perfect sense. I think there’s so much we don’t know, and this is a lot of what I relate when I was talking to my daughter recently about government things that have happened, and all the election things. If someone I would say that it’s so difficult because we, as citizens of a country, we don’t know what’s the details of the inner workings of what’s happening there, no matter how much we think we know about government doings and whatnot. If someone from the outside came to a production shoot. This is, like, the perfect example they would not understand. Oh, that person does that. I have to talk to that person before I try and approach this like I know the dynamics of a production set. And so if I take that same mindset and I move it into like, the workings of the government, are we going to know who, what, when, where, how, what the order with the protocol? There’s so much we don’t know about how it works, and that’s why I feel so stressed about talking about it. When people say, Well, why don’t you talk about it on your social media? Well, because I don’t know this inside of what’s happening inside how things work. I mean, that would be like somebody trying to make an opinion about a shoot, and why didn’t we have that talent go first? And I have all the production reasons why we couldn’t do that, but the average person wouldn’t know, you know what I’m saying. Like, really,
Rolando Rosas 37:26
absolutely, I get it. I get it. I, you know, I saw something. I’m a little closer to that action since I live 20 minutes from downtown DC, and
Helen Polise 37:35
you’re a lot closer
Rolando Rosas 37:39
than me, yeah, physically closer. You know that they just issued something NSA, of all things that you know, the agency that has more super computers than anybody else, agency, that agency issued an interesting warning. They said that Android and iPhone users should regularly, regularly restart their phones. And they listed a whole bunch of new vulnerabilities that are coming out, that are out, and I found that interesting, just that,
Helen Polise 38:03
take that guidance from you, off at night and turn it back on. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 38:08
you know, well, well, there’s, there’s a whole lot of advancements on the vulnerability side, just to put it that way, and those vulnerabilities now, the old days was like, Oh yeah, yes, I hear weird clicks. And, you know, that’s old movie stuff like that. Somebody’s listening in on you. That’s like ancient now, like horse and buggy days, in terms of the technology that NSA possesses, as well as some of the other countries, they can just send a message to your phone without it even showing up, and boom, now they’re listening and grabbing all the data. That’s how crazy it’s. That’s where it’s at right now, and that’s why the way to wipe that out would be restart your
Helen Polise 38:46
phone. Okay? Noted,
Rolando Rosas 38:49
let me get you on something else when it comes to you know, we’re talking about NSA and all that, but ai, ai is, is playing a greater role. I’m sure you’ve seen the advancements with runway, with some of the other generative AI, as well as what’s happening now the conversation around your content that’s out there on TikTok or wherever it lives, and it being used to train the AI and not getting paid for it. There’s a lot of hubbub with perplexity, for example, scraping Reddit because they’re training their algorithm and using that essentially. Now you know users are paying for a pre, free or paid version. What are your thoughts on where we’re going with that as a creator, as somebody that’s putting out content that your data or your content is being trained for, but you’re not getting anything for it.
Helen Polise 39:42
Yeah. Well, there’s so many levels to this. It’s where people’s images are being used to promote products that they’re not behind. And there’s creators that have been coming on to the platforms talking about that, and that’s really devastating, because that’s that’s even more violating, I think, than. A than it is just scary. You know, it’s like you don’t know where your face is being used to promote something that’s insane. I know obviously AI is not going away, and I know that there’s benefits to it, but I also still think that we’re individuals with souls, and so thankfully, AI, I don’t believe that AI is going to have a soul at least my lifetime. And so I always think that I could have an AI bot answering, let’s say, the comments on my TikTok, or my community, or I know on Instagram, they have a thing now where you can automate responses. I won’t do it, but I just think it’s still going to be recognizable because of my little nuances, how I am as a person and how my nuances change. So AI is learning, but we can change faster. I want to hope and believe that we can right,
Rolando Rosas 40:51
right? And I heard, but I’m scared. No, you know, the with AI, we’ve talked to a few AI guys and gals, and one of the things that I might have, it may have been Neil, I just can’t remember right now, who said this, but AI cannot replicate your experience. Hold on. Go ahead. No, I was just gonna say, I’ve got one of these in your honor, in my hands, through, through the podcast. So I could exactly, so I could channel you always handle Yes. So you could say, you know, yesterday, I was in the Greenwich Village, and I was eating a cheese sandwich, and this rat jumped out of the sewer. And, you know, people were, you know, going crazy like it can’t replicate that yet. It’s level experience that you just shared your experience, right? So your experience is yours. It can try to try to nibble at those edges, but it can’t replicate your experience in what you know to be true. Okay,
Helen Polise 41:47
I love that you said that because I’m not great with articulating things when it’s in my experience almost above my level of intellect, because I’m not that smart in that area. So that’s not my expertise. I could talk a good game of production, but you just articulated exactly what I mean, like the emotion or the reaction and how we’re going to do things. I know that AI can learn these things, but it can’t be us hoping. I’m just hoping that we can figure out a way to use it as a world that’s more productive and not destructive.
Rolando Rosas 42:22
Well, think about, you know, I’m sure you’ve used ChatGPT, or one of these, or any of these, when you try to write and it’s just like, Why can’t this just, it’s got like, 60% it’s missing that other 40 that, like, I don’t quite talk like that, or that’s not really worded the right way. It’s, it’s still a little clumsy, like, it doesn’t quite it sounds like, you know, somebody that’s trying to write a paper and learning on how to do this thing that you’re trying to get it to do, and it’s putting it out there, instead of, like, in your voice, like, yeah, I was at the beach and the all of a sudden the sand hit me in the eye, and there was this guy behind me. You know what? He was from Coney Island. And you know what? Coney Island has some of the best hot dogs, where they do the hot dog hunt. You know, can’t quite put all of those feelings yet. Okay,
Helen Polise 43:13
so here’s my my thinking on that, because I don’t use ChatGPT to write things. I will sometimes say, if I need an outline, I’ll go to ChatGPT for that, and then I get the outline, and then I write it. But I’ve been doing it the opposite now, and I find it much more productive or successful when I do it the opposite. So I write it quickly, and I don’t think, worry about, I guess, if it’s a run on sentence, or if it’s bad grammar, I just write it like a run, almost like a run on Helen thought. And then I just give it to ChatGPT already written, and I say, make this better, something simple like that. Write this better. And then I read it, and I’m like, Ah, just cleaned up my grammar, but it still has my vibe, so it doesn’t take away my vibe when it does when I do in in that direction. So I’m giving it my vibe, and then it’s giving it back to me. It cleaned up version of my vibe. So it’s quicker for me to write something. But it’s not like I’m giving it to the bot to write from scratch. And I think that’s where people are missing how to use it well, is they’re not giving it. They’re taking too much time doing back and forth and trying to ask it a question. Then it writes it, then make it this way, then write it, make it more hip, then go back. You know, going back and forth, back and forth takes longer than, like, writing it from your soul, and then put it in, and then let the bot clean it up, and it’s like,
Rolando Rosas 44:31
like that. A second, wait, a minute, you’re writing that down like that. I like that, yeah. Or he’s is, you know, he’s helping us in the back end, and he’s listening to all this. So Ori, I hope you’re taking notes. We use it a lot. So we’re big into perplexity. We use them all. Perplexity, ChatGPT, for all kinds of different things. And I know there’ll be a day when it’ll be a lot easier to use. It’s still a little clumsy. It doesn’t always figure things out. But I like your approach about it’s
Helen Polise 45:01
different. I think I just I crack the code on how it helps me. So it’s because it’s hard for me to then make a ChatGPT thing into my language. It’s easier for the bot to take my language and just clean it up a little bit. And I just really like it. It’s been so productive for me. Instead of proofreading things, I can say, just tweak this. And then I said, if I just if I don’t like the way it tweaked it, I’ll put it back, or I’ll add my language back in if it cleaned it up too much. So yeah, that’s what I recommend.
Rolando Rosas 45:29
There’s like 50 questions I want to ask you, but I know we’re short on time, but leave me with something that inspires or brings the inner better part of me, and you’ve been doing this a lot today while we’re talking because there’s a lot here to unpack, but leave me with something aspiring or that’s inspired you recently that other people that are listening to this could feel good about, because right now we’re in one of those times where I need to take more than a deep breath, right, several deep breaths, and probably something very strong, right? Yep, what have you found that’s given you just a little bit of peace of mind,
Helen Polise 46:08
that there’s a skill set I have that I am tapping into at a different level, and it’s not production, and it’s not teaching, and it’s none of those things. It’s bringing people together as, like, I’m trying to try not to be emotional about it. But when I used to live in the suburbs, we might have talked about this, I don’t know, but I used to have dance parties at my house for ladies only. And I would invite the ladies over, and I’d be like, we now no men are here, and your husbands are home, like, we can just dance till we drop. Music would blast, you know, there might be shots, there might be some alcohol involved, whatever, having a good time, and I had women from all walks of life that would never hang out together together in my house, dancing till we dropped. Okay, so I have, I think I am creating that vibe, and it’s not a women’s only thing now. Now it’s a creator version of that vibe, where in my virtual studio, you can call it a community, you can call it whatever you want. It whatever you want. I like to call it a studio, because it feels really right for me. The group that I’m attracting are the kind of people I want to be with. They are good souls. They are there for each other. They’re supportive. It’s happening so quickly. In the first week, I have 80 members first week, which is amazing. And of the 80 members, they’re already in each other’s videos. I go to sometimes on TikTok, I’m like, Oh, let me see how they’re doing my you know, how my studio crew doing? And I go and look, and I say, Oh, my God, five other studio members have commented on this video, so they’re already supporting each other. So I think what I’ve got here is I didn’t realize how much I have a propensity for bringing the right people together and making positive impact. And that’s what I’m gonna freaking do from now on. I love
Rolando Rosas 47:46
I love it. I’m gonna just flip that love that doesn’t get old when I do that for you.
Helen Polise 47:51
No, not for me either.
Rolando Rosas 47:55
Helen, I enjoy talking to you. I wish I could do this more. I know that you’re such a busy, busy woman. You get so much going on, you’ve got so many things. We do have to do it again, put her on the calendar, and you know, we’ll
Helen Polise 48:09
always find new things to talk about. Yes, part
Rolando Rosas 48:12
three. I want to do part three whenever you’re ready.
Helen Polise 48:16
Okay, absolutely, exactly. We’ll do
Rolando Rosas 48:19
Exactamente. Well, we have, I think, said it all for now, but if you loved this episode and you enjoyed nerding out with myself and Helen, you know, I want to encourage you to hit that subscribe and also follow us. Helen, we want people to follow us, and here’s the reason, because when they do, we know we’re on the right track, and we want to deliver more awesome guests like Helen. I promise you that if you do that, I will do my best with my team to bring you more people like Helen on this podcast, and if you want to support us even further. And I know some of those that are listening are in the business world, and you’re looking for a company that knows technology, like we were talking about earlier, about security vulnerabilities, about communications. That’s something our company has been doing for 20 years, and we can help you put that together in a way where it’s easy for your IT team and so that they can rest a little bit easier at night knowing that they have a technology plan that’s going to work for them. So go ahead and check that out, though, be in the links in the description. And you know, Helen is always a good talker. She delivers such good stories, you know, let’s continue the TikTok theme. We talked to another TikToker. I think she’s a millennial. Her name is Kaila Uli. Had talked about what the pitfalls were when you start your online business, especially if you’re social first. She had a lot to share and why you really want to think this out before you open up the online piece. Piece to start transacting. Go ahead check out that episode with Kaila Uli. I will see you there. Thank you for joining us today.
Helen Polise 50:08
Thanks for having me. Thank you.
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