Up next in 10
What if every subscriber you've ever earned actually belonged to you?
Not to YouTube. Not to Instagram. Not to whatever platform decides to change its algorithm next week. To you.
In this episode of The Digital Collective, Caren Glasser and James Hicks sit down with Jan Creidenberg from Open Video to talk about what audience ownership really means — and why the creators who figure this out now will have a very different future than those who don't.
We cover:
— Why building on platforms you don't own is a silent business risk most creators ignore until it's too late
— How Open Video lets you host, own, and monetize your content on your own terms
— What it actually looks like to migrate from YouTube and connect your video library to your own website
— How AI tools are making it easier than ever to manage your owned platform without the tech overwhelm
— The first steps to building a digital foundation that no algorithm can take away
The tools are here. The shift is happening. This episode will show you what's possible.
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
digital collective
0:11
oh my goodness third time's a charm is this the third show it seems like i don't know fourth
0:25
Oh my gosh. I see. I apologize. I'm starting off like that. That is why no one worry about James Hicks. It's, it's, it's Karen over there
0:32
She's the one that's keeping us locked in, focused on making sure we talk about the stuff that, that matters to everyone
0:40
So welcome back everyone to the digital collective. We last month had an interesting conversation
0:46
We talked about the math of business, talked about ROI, ROE, return on energy
0:52
return on investment, things of that. but there's a silent risk that most creators and leaders ignore until it's
0:59
too late. I like this term that Karen put in the notes, digital sharecropping
1:05
My goodness. We spend a lot of time building homes on land that we don't own
1:12
TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff, right? Only to realize that that landlord, me and Mark Zuckerberg don't get along
1:20
I apologize. I say that already, but folks who know me, know me and Zuckerberg just don't get along. But those landlords change their direction
1:29
they pivot. And at any point, we hear a lot of times creators are being locked out of their
1:34
channels, out of their accounts, out of their environments. Let's talk today about audience
1:41
ownership, this audience ownership revolution, moving from tenant to ownership, moving from
1:48
moving from rental agreement to mortgage payment and, you know, really important strategies on
1:55
on making that happen for creators this year, Karen, did I get it right? I just, I just rattled it off. I want to make sure it's right. Okay
2:02
You got it right. I'm Karen Glasser. This is my pal, James Hicks
2:06
I call him Dr. Hicks. Well, that's why I got the glasses on today. Today together
2:11
we're going to impact the intersection of technology and autonomy and how to
2:16
Stop renting your future from big tech algorithms. So this episode is building on the themes that we've already started of sustainability
2:27
And we've discussed protecting energy and all of that. Today, we have a very special guest
2:33
He is literally from the platform we're going to be talking about today
2:38
And when I met him, I said, he's our kind of guy. He's my kind of people
2:43
And I know you're going to join him. His name is Jan Kreidenberg, and he's literally here to talk about Open.Video, where you are owning, where you put your stuff, not renting
2:54
Jan, come on in. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. You can't get bought on better than that, right
2:59
No kidding. Forget what I say. It's what she said. Yeah, look at me. I'm beaming over here
3:04
I got the man in the middle, too. So today, the topic is the tenant and the owner mindset
3:11
Okay. We're talking about if you're a tenant, you have a certain, I keep going out of the frame
3:15
If you're a tenant, you have a certain mindset. And if you are an owner, you have a different mindset, right
3:20
I think we can all agree with that. Traditional growth focuses on views and subscribers on third-party apps, YouTube, right
3:29
We all look and say, how many views do we have? How many people are following us
3:32
And why do we say that? Because if we want to monetize on YouTube, you have to have a thousand subscribers and
3:37
you have to have 4,000 viewing hours. That's a lot, right? The risk, if you don't own your data
3:46
right, you don't own the business. So there's a lot of risks in this. And the solution is to shift
3:53
away from where we rent to a platform that we can actually own. Isn't that right, James
4:01
I've talked a lot about this exact same conversation. Again, I call it again, getting
4:06
off of a rental agreement getting onto more of a mortgage because i'm very fickle myself with a
4:12
lot of the platform that's why i make that somewhat lighthearted joke about zuckerberg like they change their direction numerous times and dependent on climate dependent on
4:23
uh metrics whatever the case may be and jan kick in right right here as well right because you see
4:28
it from a different perspective i see it from a user and i see it from a from a from a educator's
4:32
perspective. I'm educating clients and things of that nature of what platforms to look at
4:37
But I tell folks have insurance just in case TikTok goes to a thing and then needs to be shut
4:44
down and it needs to change ownership. This happened not too long ago. So if you're relying
4:49
on the platform like that for your livelihood, what are you going to do when it no longer is
4:55
owned by this entity? It's now part of the Oracle. There's just a lot of extra stuff that you
5:01
shouldn't have to worry about as a business owner or as an entrepreneur as a smaller digital creator
5:05
i think the big thing too um a lot of people i mean don't get me wrong the the social platforms
5:14
all these uh in places where you're renting land they have their use um they have things that are
5:20
good about them the distribution the discovery all of that um but you have to remember that
5:25
the platforms themselves their goals are not aligned with your goals so your goal is you know
5:30
I want people to get my content. I want them to invest in me or connect with me
5:36
If you look at YouTube or Instagram or any of them, their goal is to keep users on the platform for as long as possible
5:43
longer time, more ads, they see the more money they make. And it's, it's not really
5:47
they don't care if it's your video or if it's one of the other millions of
5:51
creators out there that they're on there for it's, it's how do we maximize that? So, and then, you know, even when you get them there, well
5:58
then there's so much going on. It's, it's your videos there's 10 other recommendations probably people talking about the same thing as you
6:05
different spin and i'd say your competitors so you're basically sending people to a platform
6:10
where uh you're you're competing for eyeballs versus just owning the the relationship with them
6:16
so well we talked we wouldn't rent right you wouldn't build a factory on rented land
6:22
with rent month to month you literally build on it because you're building your you're a plat you're
6:28
building on a platform that you don't own and at any time the landlord can say sorry i don't i'm
6:34
not leasing to you anymore right and that's a problem i think that's a problem and you know
6:39
we talk about free and we talk about paid platforms and a lot of people yeah well social's free and
6:45
youtube's free and you know no it's not it's not free it may it may be no money you're not paying
6:53
money but you're paying what are we paying i mean really let's talk about that yeah i mean we we
6:58
we like to talk about the creator tax that's on the platform so it's um they get to they get to
7:03
use your your video content um they get to monetize it and then guess what they give you 50 of it if
7:09
you've reached a certain level um so yeah the money that you've worked hard on the video you
7:15
give it to them and then they get to take 50 of it um and you know in their terms and everything
7:21
they they also say you know they have the rights to your content and they reserve the right to take the content down if it violates policy And I think a lot of times you don even know what policy you violated and then good luck trying to get in touch with people there
7:35
So again, I think I'll say this throughout, but I'm not saying this is not an anti-platforms
7:41
They're good for what they are, but we've all heard those stories of people, you know
7:45
not building off of platforms and then connecting with people beyond. that right there is an amazing and good point that i don't want to gloss over right again we're
7:56
let me be the guy that that poo-poos on on certain platforms but but but that's not the
8:02
coaching statement that i would make to someone as well the fact is that they're they're all
8:06
relevant they all serve a purpose and dependent on your needs yeah maybe you want to leverage all
8:11
of those different platforms but at the end of the day you need to start as a solopreneur
8:17
entrepreneur as a digital creator, you really need to start thinking about what do you own
8:21
and how you can position that to your community, position that to your network, and actually
8:28
control what is shown, right? If you can make that determination, if you can make that switch
8:35
in your creation journey or in your entrepreneurship journey, that's when you really start seeing
8:41
true value, true benefit. And again, it's your voice. It's not someone else's voice. It's not
8:47
someone else's ads that's coming in underneath your piece of content so i didn't want to gloss
8:53
over that i wanted to make sure no it's important it's important and the other piece of this is if
8:58
we're let's talk about youtube for a second let's say you have thousands of people let's say you
9:04
have a thousand you have 500 you have no way of connecting with them you don't have emails you
9:09
can't you can't if you have subscribers you can't talk to them which is why we're here talking about
9:15
another platform. What are we talking about? Y'all are what you're doing to fix this, man
9:22
I know. We're going to talk about Open.Video. Open.Video is connected to YouTube, actually. It's not instead
9:30
of YouTube. So first, let's get that out of the way. Open.Video
9:34
is not a platform that we're sitting here talking about saying you need to get off YouTube. No
9:38
we're not saying that at all. We don't want you to get off YouTube. In fact
9:42
Open.Video is connected to YouTube. So they have this really cool app
9:46
You push a button and put it on autopilot and it will pull in all of your YouTube videos
9:51
How cool is that? And then when it comes in, and I think we're going to touch a little bit about MCP today
9:57
just because we have to, we have to, because Open Videos is rolling out something that's
10:04
very cool right now. But the idea is you take your videos from YouTube, you bring them over to Open Video
10:10
automatically push a button and now you own that and you own it on your platform you can connect it
10:16
to your website a sub domain I've said that right this time a sub domain on my site it's it's videos
10:24
dot karenglasser.com it's my site it lives on my site and therefore nobody can take it away from me
10:32
and every time everybody watches that video we're going to talk about monetization I get paid and
10:38
I'm not sharing it with Google. A lot of stuff that I just dropped here, where do you want to go
10:45
Yeah, so I think, and kind of the, I'll take a step back and kind of share kind of the vision
10:51
of why we thought of this. So, you know, I think we talked about like YouTube is great for discovery
10:58
social platforms are great for discovery, put stuff on there, let people find you
11:02
through the discovery algorithm. Maybe you'll probably get some people that find your videos
11:08
And that's great. But I think a lot of creators end up there, you know, they're making all this content and then they're sharing links with people like, hey, go or promoting on other platforms like, hey, go check out my video
11:19
And what you're doing is now sending them from one platform to another platform where you don't own it. And on top of that, you know, is YouTube your entire business or is it part of your business
11:30
And do you have your website where you have other things that you want people to read or you maybe have some courses or other call to actions that are part of your business
11:42
Trying to send them to YouTube and then from YouTube, hey, come over to my website. That's an extra hop and it's just going to be, you know, it's not as easy to convert people or kind of get people on your website
11:53
So, yeah, that was kind of the idea behind it is, you know, in the past video content or video hosting has been very expensive
12:02
I think that's why everybody went to these platforms and hosted everything there because it's free
12:07
But this is kind of, you know, taking away the requirements for monetization, taking away the requirements to host on the third party and really just having that video content on your website where you have much more control
12:19
All right, Karen, here I go. I'm about to, I know. I've got notes here
12:24
and he's probably going to call me after this and chastise me but
12:29
pretend we're on stage at a pitch contest what's that 5-10 minute, what's that elevator pitch
12:38
that you give to potential users, not potential investors, not someone from the business perspective
12:45
I think I understand the answer because I've had enough conversations with you
12:50
but what's the value in open video You kind of talked around it just now, but what's the real value for someone who is out there, blood, sweat and tears, creating content, trying to talk to a community
13:02
Why add this to their now toolkit? Yeah. So I think, yeah, I kind of talked about a few things, but I think it's audience ownership, monetization and additional discoverability, I'd say are the big three things
13:17
So first off, I'll touch on the monetization. So, you know, in theory, YouTube could allow everybody to earn revenue from the ads
13:26
They're running ads on everybody's videos, regardless if you're in the partner program or not
13:31
So they have the ability. It's just, you know, they want to make it exclusive. They want to make sure you get to a level before you can start earning from there
13:38
It doesn't have to be that way. And if you look at kind of the open web, like AdSense, it's for everyone
13:44
You can run display ads on your website, things like that. But you can actually bring video inventory onto your website as well through not just Google, but through other partners out there
13:55
Trade Desk, Magnite, Triple Lift, Rubicon. And so it's more so just they don't want to go down to that level
14:05
But, you know, we've kind of a backstory, Open Video is owned by Ezoic, which is a larger company
14:12
We've been in the digital ad space for 15 years at this point. So we actually have relationships with all the demand partners out there and can get websites approved to and make them eligible for inventory from from these demand partners really from from day one
14:28
So I think that's. Yeah. Hold on, man. Again, don't. I just keep going
14:34
You just gloss over some really good gems there. Karen and I kind of know that, and folks could assume that
14:43
But the fact that, again, that you come from already establishment, you can walk in a conference room, virtual conference room
14:51
whatever the case may be, and folks already know your name because of the parent organization That matters right there too So there again is a reason for someone to look at open video and say okay I can go up there and I can drop Jan name
15:08
And people will sit up straight in their chair and be like, okay, you're rocking with them
15:13
Let's talk about maybe some dollar figures start going up. Because again, you come with credibility is where I'm really trying to get to
15:18
I'm being a little lighthearted about it. But again, those are the things that matter as well from a creation perspective
15:25
And when we're trying to rise above the noise of so much stuff that's out there already
15:29
Right. Yeah. And there is. And with all the demand partners, like I said, you know, we've had relationships for years with them
15:36
And if you're an individual creator or a small group or whatever, it's really hard to actually work with them directly
15:43
They want to work at high-level big media companies and then with partners like us that know how to use the technology and can kind of provide it for users
15:54
So, yeah, EZOIC has been part of Google's certified publishing partner program for the last 11 years
16:01
We're a premier partner. So we're one of four in the United States
16:05
I think there's five total in the world. and so yeah having that relationship with Google and then also other partners which I think I said
16:14
it before but you know Google is not the dominant player in video ad inventory that they are on the
16:18
display side so you know having that competition having you know all the other partners as well
16:23
and unlocking that that inventory is pretty big. And the story is interesting I mean you said
16:30
Evoke's been around for 15 years and when we when I asked you what made open video come around why
16:37
was the reason for it to come around and you told me right you can you can say yeah it was you know
16:41
we we started and you guys have probably seen on you know on video web or on websites there's like
16:47
an auto playing video ad in the corner um or they'll have like a player so that's kind of common
16:52
on the digital publishing space it's a big revenue generator um but what we saw is there's really not
16:58
a lot of solutions out there that uh actually help out creators with their content that they actually
17:04
want people to watch. So you'll go to those sites, you'll see it. It's just a video playing with an
17:08
ad. It's people just view it as an ad pretty much. And like I said, it's fine. It makes some money
17:14
but it's the goal of that is not to watch the video. And there are a lot of creators out there
17:19
that want an easy to use solution that they can actually host their own video content and provide
17:24
it in their own video hub, kind of a white labeled YouTube, if you will, on their site
17:28
Right. And it's easy. And you know, once, once you're in there, anyone that has an open
17:34
video and by the way, it's free right now. So let's just say that. So there's no barrier
17:39
to entry here in terms of financial barrier to entry. You can come in there and it's pretty
17:44
simple to migrate and, and to get this set up specifically, you can set up your monetization
17:50
You can decide how many ads you want running in your videos. I always laugh because I want
17:55
Fewer, not more. I'm always annoyed when I watch a video and there's an ad like every three seconds
18:00
So you have that ability. It's all highly customizable. It looks like YouTube
18:06
It behaves like YouTube, except it doesn't because it's yours. That's right
18:13
So I just pulled up mine just now for folks to see, right
18:19
And again, it's a typical playlist. It's a typical kind of structure from that perspective
18:22
and I just did the kind of default template. Yeah. My color schemes and things of that nature
18:28
But yeah, talk a little bit about this. I want to show mine too. Yeah, so I was going to say
18:33
there's a few different templates that you can use. You can create playlists and kind of reorganize
18:40
what you want your homepage to look like. I know Karen's added all her different playlists
18:46
easy access. Hers looks better than mine. And if you scroll down, you'll see at the top it says all videos, it has playlists
18:57
it's already on autopilot, so it sends it in from YouTube to come here
19:01
Let's jump into MCP because one of the things... No? Yeah, I was going to say really quick, while we're on this page, if you want to, just one
19:10
other thing that I think is important, kind of on the audience ownership
19:15
So we talked about subscribers on YouTube, and it's really on the platforms, it's kind
19:20
of become a vanity metric, right? So cool. You have 3 million subscribers. If you look at some
19:26
of those channels on YouTube, they have, you know, five or 10,000 views, um, probably a signal that
19:31
a lot of their subscribers are not actually being pushed those videos. It's more just the discovery
19:36
algorithm. So I think that's one part. And then the other part, uh, so let's say you want to
19:40
get to know your audience more. Um, they're just a number. They, they are one of the 3 million
19:46
subscribers you don't know who they are you get like I guess their username but you don't get their
19:51
email or anything to be able to connect with them so I think one really cool thing about open video
19:56
so if you scroll up James you'll see in the top right corner there's a subscribe button
20:00
and so what happens when somebody subscribes to your channel on here they'll you know they have
20:06
to create an account just like YouTube but when they subscribe you actually get that email to use
20:11
as part of your business, which we all know, you know, I think you've seen on the internet
20:15
email addresses. First-party data is really the most, I would say, at this point. And it allows
20:24
you to break off from relying on the algorithm to, hey, I have this newsletter, or I have this email
20:29
list of 150 people. I can reach out to them. I can alert them when my new video has been released
20:35
I can, you know, add them to my newsletter, things like that. So it's, again, it's about making that
20:40
connection with them versus just hopefully having them see your video on a platform yeah blindly i
20:46
mean because that you could use that as the opt-in for again for your other products you want to
20:52
subscribe to this that means you want to be part of the the glass of the ecosystem the ecosystem
20:57
i call it a universe she's a she's the i'm giving her the whole universe but that right there add
21:04
them to your newsletter add them to your community add them to whatever the case may be that so that
21:08
and it's not a side-handed way of doing it. That again, they opt into a piece of your content
21:14
They opt into your information. Add them to your distribution. Yeah. Perfect
21:23
And then, yeah, really quick. And then Karen, we can hop over to MCP because I know we're all super excited about that
21:29
But I think the last thing, and it's kind of going back to discovery ability
21:34
is just the ability to have your videos rank outside of outside of youtube as well um so the cool thing about open video you know when you
21:43
upload all your videos uh each video has its own watch page um looks very similar to a youtube watch
21:50
page so you can see it just click on any video james okay you see the watch page down below
21:58
yeah and you'll see again it's got um you know similar layout to youtube got the description
22:03
other videos, but they're all your other videos instead of other people's
22:08
But I think the cool thing is so search engines kind of made a change
22:12
to what they allow to rank for video content. And it needs to be the video has to be the main thing on the page
22:19
that people are going to. So you'll see a lot of people have an article and then they embed
22:24
you know YouTube video one of their YouTube videos at the bottom of it YouTube is getting all of the juice for that video because it hosted on YouTube So that video will help that page rank but it that video if it shows up in Google
22:39
search or anything, it's going to be sending them to YouTube. And so what this does, it creates these optimized SEO, optimized watch pages that when they're
22:46
on your site, they get indexed and then they can actually show up in Google search results
22:51
And, you know, if you have it on YouTube, maybe YouTube will show up as well. but then you get two spots in the search results versus one
22:57
So you're kind of double dipping. And then again, having people come back to your website versus versus just on YouTube
23:05
So there's also a link there guys that will take you to my site
23:10
So it's connected. So if they're visiting, you know, here are my videos
23:15
they can also go to my website right directly from here. So there's a lot of really great functionality here
23:23
It's yours. right? There's a black, you can actually make a dark or white light screen as well. It's funny
23:29
I keep mine dark and I can see you keep yours light over here. That's so funny. Um, let's, let's jump into MCP. What is MCP? Let's do that first. What is an MCP
23:40
So an MCP is basically a, it's a protocol that, uh, Anthropic actually released, but it's, it's
23:48
model context protocol which basically is a way to allow uh ai agents or clients to
23:55
uh you know use tools or use a ui you can kind of think of it like an api but it basically gives it
24:01
access to uh control a lot of the things that you traditionally had to do out of the ui for
24:08
for a product um so you've probably heard a lot about people talking about these with their ai
24:14
workflows and everything. Basically what it allows you to do is link up all your agents to
24:20
do tasks behind the scene versus requiring you to do those tasks
24:25
And why that's so exciting for those of us who are content creators is that if you go and create
24:32
a video and you're supposed to optimize it, and what does that mean? You're supposed to put a
24:37
title that will be searchable and you want to make sure there's a thumbnail that's searchable
24:41
and the description searchable. It's optimized. If you don't want to optimize though yourself and
24:48
you want somebody else to help you when it comes over to open video you can then go into Claude
24:54
or and I use Claude so I'm going to use Claude as an example. I have connected open videos MCP
24:59
connection and I literally now can say to Claude copy and paste a title of my video that's sitting
25:07
an open video and say, give me some titles, give me some descriptions. I need some categories
25:12
and some keywords and whatever else you want. And some suggestions for a thumbnail
25:19
It will give you all of that. You can play with Claude, go back and forth. And then at the end
25:24
it will say to you, he will say to you, would you like me to populate the video now sitting
25:29
an open video? That kind of blew my mind, Jan, that it literally populated the video
25:34
Yeah, it's pretty cool because then you can also use these other skills
25:41
So, I mean, I think James and I talked about this, but yeah, for the description, for example, maybe you write up, hey, this is generally what it's about
25:49
And you just ask, Claude, hey, can you turn this into a well-optimized description for the video
25:55
And it will go and do it and it will change it all and then upload it directly into the UI for you
26:00
So again, it kind of eliminates the need to go from dashboard to dashboard to dashboard to do things
26:06
And I think there's a lot of really cool use cases that it unlocks, including it to putting it as part of other workflows
26:17
So, for example, I use this one a lot, but our CMO, Tyler Bishop, he started making AI music
26:24
and he actually, you know, he started to, he showed up on the Rising Artists on Spotify and
26:31
it's, it's this, it's this, it's like rap music mixed with 60s, 70s soul. It's very unique, but
26:39
it's really catchy. And he had some friends who, they were like, you know, we really want to use
26:45
these videos at karaoke night, but the karaoke people required, you know, you need the actual
26:50
video with karaoke lyrics so he was able to basically set everything up okay here's the song
26:55
upload it to one system it would create these create a video with the the lyrics on it and then
27:02
the agent would then take that over to open video upload it over to open video all without him
27:06
needing to do anything and he even said he was like you know my friends have asked this would
27:10
have taken me probably weeks to do um and i got 20 videos done within 30 minutes and it's all just
27:18
working in the background it's just a couple prompts saying hey this is what i want you to do
27:22
and then it goes and does it so working smarter not harder right exactly i talk a lot about
27:28
eliminating steps and workflow yep and in all transparency for folks that are going to be
27:35
watching this jan told me karen told me about this and jan showed me i damn near fell on my chair
27:42
right because it actually works at such this early stage in your development so i'm gonna
27:49
give you some kudos here some flowers brother right the fact that it works the way that you
27:53
say it works and it's still evolving is incredibly valuable and important to creators right business
28:02
so anyone who's who's live on the internet anyone who's selling any marketer any any entrepreneur
28:08
or anyone who needs online presence, the fact that you can connect into your LLM of choice
28:15
and tell that LLM to do the thing, and the thing happens on a platform that you own
28:22
in minutes as opposed to weeks and days, I'm breaking it down kind of consciously
28:28
just from that perspective for folks who may not be as deep in the weeds as we are
28:32
but that right there is the value as well. You need to have to talk about that
28:36
the fact the stuff that you talked about before just having open video just owning the monetization
28:42
just owning the advertising just having videos like karen glasser.com just having that piece
28:47
but now well wait there's more right that's what this is this is the steve jobs moment
28:54
this this kind of and i can do that because i work for steve for 10 years so i am a member
28:59
of the cult of mag so we can talk about that um that right there is too darn cool bro and the
29:06
fact that that's available today and it works it's not just theory it's not just vaporware it's not
29:11
just written on the back of a paper napkin uh i'm excited as an advocate just as someone who's going
29:16
to be using it and leveraging and talking about it i'm excited for what's going to come in the
29:21
short term i don't even know what's going to come in the short term well there's we didn't even talk
29:25
about live stream oh you know live stream they bought uh open video i don't think it's launched
29:32
officially yet but live stream is now it's going to be available on open video and it will show on
29:38
your channel page so if you go live like for instance James you and I go live with this show
29:46
on our channel page and people would go there they'd watch it and because it's on our channel
29:51
page we're going to get paid because it's monetized and it's all but that's another
29:56
thing that's coming is this breaking news is this breaking news It's been something we've been developing. We pivoted over to working on the MCP, but it's something else that we've been developing in the background. Really, I think our goal is to build the products that creators are looking for
30:16
So, yeah, hopefully we'll kind of get it refocused after we get the MCP stuff fully, all the bugs, things and everything
30:25
But it's been in a great place. And I actually want to say, so, James, I know you're a big Manus user, right
30:32
So you've kind of built your website on Manus and everything like that. So I was going to say if we want to do it, we could actually set up the MCP with your Manus account as well
30:44
and then you can fully control it through Manus instead of using Claude. It really works with all the AI agents
30:50
We did it. We're not going to do this live because I don't want everybody to see my back end
30:56
because my back end can be a little less expensive. We'll have to do this afterwards. Hold on, because we did it with Claude
31:03
You can do it with Manus too? Yeah, so I've actually got it pulled up
31:08
If you want, I can drive quickly and show you guys. Sure
31:13
I tell you what, I tell you what this. Okay. See, ladies and gentlemen, this is a breaking news for sure
31:23
Yeah. I figured I'd surprise you guys with this, but, um, so can you see the screen at this point
31:29
Yep. Okay, cool. So, um, so yeah, the cool thing. So if you go into, uh, the settings for Manus and then you can go down here to connectors
31:39
and you'll see I already actually added the Open Video MCP connector
31:46
So really quick, just information for this, it all is on open.video.com or open.video.com
31:56
And then all I had to do was grab this config right here
32:01
And I can go ahead and just show you. I've already done it, obviously. But you just go to add connectors, and then you can do custom MCP
32:09
add an npc server and then oops you just uh i don't have it copied but you just paste in the
32:17
the config that i had import it and then and then it's all set up so um
32:23
so then uh like i said with my open video channels i i just find
32:39
So you guys, you're seeing this in real time, right? Literally, we are seeing this in real time as it goes and fetches things
32:53
I love this. So there's, yep, so there's my four channels. Wow
33:01
All listed right here. And then I think we don't need to go into all the details
33:06
if you're using a desktop, like if you're using cloud desktop or other desktop versions, you can
33:13
actually install another helper, which we don't need to go over right now. But basically it allows
33:19
you from your computer, you can say, here's the file path for the video I want to upload. You throw
33:24
it in here and then it will go and just pull the video locally from your computer and it'll be able
33:29
to upload it. And then addition of what you can do is if you just have a public link. So for
33:36
For example, I've got a video of my dog here. Of course you do
33:40
So share and copy link. So then we can say, I want to upload to Cronenberg.com channel
34:06
Wow. And so now it's just going downloading the video and then it'll go ahead and upload it
34:12
And then from there, you know, I can update, you know, this is what I want the title to be
34:15
Here's the description, everything like that. You can even say okay and I want ad breaks for the video to be after every five minutes so on and so forth Again don have to touch the dashboard once You can just do all this um and then it just appears in your channel so set it and forget it you know
34:32
yep i'm gonna need some more credits no madness because i ran out last night i was i was doing
34:40
some deep thinking and anybody i'm waiting for april 3rd to roll around because that's when what
34:45
that's when it renews you know to get the credits and this is what happens guys i mean for those of
34:50
of you who are power users of any of these apps, you probably have noticed that you run out of
34:55
credits. Yeah. I dare say what tier I'm on. So we can go down that rabbit hole too, but we won't
35:02
this is not an intervention. That's cool, man. Right. Again, just pasted it in to your LLM of
35:10
choice. Again, if you're a cloud user, if you're a managed user, I'm sure if you're an open AI
35:16
whichever one there is you're building out those mcp connectivity uh elements and so you
35:23
you remove that friction it's flexible from the perspective of where you where an individual and
35:29
organization is working you can bring in this capability and then once you bring it in and
35:34
you start configuring it to your liking like karen's site is branded to her brand colors and
35:40
things of that it looks like you it feels like you it goes to where you want it to as opposed to
35:46
all the other millions of folks, billions of folks that are on like a YouTube or something
35:50
of that nature. That matters. So I'm sorry, I keep harping on those pieces right there
35:56
because again, getting off of that rented, I'm that kind of guy, I beat it in people's heads
36:01
because you got to hear it not just three times, four times before you pick it up
36:05
That matters, because again, talking about getting off rented land, getting on someplace
36:09
that you actually own, having the mortgage, now you control that destiny
36:14
yeah exactly and i think you know i know we shout it from the rooftops all the time uh for a lot of
36:20
people it takes having that unfortunate real life experience where you run into issues um and you
36:27
know at that point it's it's probably too late so we kind of say you know you're building on on
36:30
quicksand um and it's it's about how you get to you know that that stable land that you can continue
36:36
to grow and uh you know grow it yourself not just relying on on others or you know going by
36:42
I want to say it over and over again. It's not instead of YouTube, guys
36:46
So if you're in your head, you're thinking, but YouTube, but Google, but discover
36:52
It's not instead. So to me, that's very important. And the other thing is, let's say you want to get started
37:00
So make sure you look in the comments below after the show. There's a link
37:04
You can click on it. It's free. Go get yourself an account and then start setting it up
37:08
And you can migrate your videos over. You don't do what I did. I just pushed the button and everything came over and it took forever and a day and I didn't want
37:16
them all. But you can go in and identify which one. You can identify a playlist that you want to put
37:21
in or an individual video and it will automatically put it in and then connect it to the MCP
37:28
If you just didn't even optimize those videos, just bring it in and then talk to your dev or one
37:34
of us. We have teams around that we can help you get set up in terms of connecting it to your domain
37:40
Or you don't have to. You don't have to connect it to your domain. You can still get paid, but it would just live on the open video ecosystem
37:48
or whatever, what did you call it, universal, right? Or whatever that is
37:55
So, you know, pick what you want. Add your brand kit, do whatever you want, and then it will be
38:00
I just thought of something, and I'm an old guy. When the ideas come in my head, I've got to see them or they'll fall out
38:06
And then, Karen, I'll let you go on with your next question. we talk about, I'm a huge believer people pay attention in what they pay for
38:15
Right. Day one, day zero, the fact that it's free to leverage the platform and you don't have to go
38:22
into specifics if you don't want, but I'm just going to ask, is there a monetization strategy
38:27
down the road for this platform? Yes. So, so we'll down the road. I mean, right now I'd say we're
38:34
trying to just drive product adoption. And because we are part of a bigger company
38:39
we do have the ability to kind of do that early days, not necessarily bootstrapped
38:45
But yeah there plans for paid features For example paywalls if you want to set those up or your live would be paid or you know if you have an absorbent you know video library yeah maybe you need to pay a little bit uh for the
39:01
hosting costs and stuff but for right now it's it's completely free and it's um yeah no no tie-ins
39:06
or anything to using it so appreciate you for saying that and again because i didn't want
39:10
any assumptions or anything of that nature people sign up and then they'll find out oh you can only
39:14
upload or you're going to have three videos. No, it's, it's, you have multiple channels too
39:21
We were talking about this before we went live. You can have multiple channels. If you have multiple YouTube channels, bring them in. There's no reason that you can't do that at all
39:30
So what can we tell our audience right now? I mean, other than just do it, you know
39:36
just do it, click the link. I really, I kind of want to know from those of you who are watching
39:43
right now whether it's well it's all replay but if you're watching let us know if you have content
39:51
that's living somewhere else and you you're listening to us and we're very clearly telling you
40:01
don't do that unless you also do open video i'm curious what is a barrier to entry it doesn't cost
40:09
anything, right? You have a YouTube channel. You don't have a YouTube channel. You just want to
40:16
upload videos. I'm always curious. Let us know in the comments, what might be a barrier to entry on
40:23
this? What are you thinking when you see this? What comes to mind? You say, oh, yippee, I'm going
40:27
to go do this or I can't. We want to know, right? I know Jan wants to, we all want to know what
40:34
if there's a barrier to entry or you're actually literally saying, no, this is actually very cool
40:38
I'm going to do this right now. That's, that's what I want to know. That's what I want to, we don't want to wait for an algorithm change
40:46
right? Value your audience. We don't want to wait for that. We don't. We want you to start owning your way
40:53
Yeah. I was looking at the backside or the config for, in my environment
40:58
So the, the setup and everything it's, it's, it's pretty straightforward. so the argument of it's difficult to configure is difficult to set up it's pretty much just a
41:11
couple of toggles there's a couple of links and there's a couple of and then it's just go go and get it go and do link channel yeah that's literally the word i'm looking at the back end
41:18
right it's literally that link channel so that barrier of entry is gone right uh and i think
41:25
that matters also as well because again if it's complex if it's convoluted if it's if it's if it's
41:30
time consuming to do a lot of folks will shy away from it hooking up the mcp as you said on the
41:35
website takes two minutes to do it's just copy and paste boom and it's done and configured so
41:40
really those arguments get out of your own way folks yeah and i'd say the the cool thing too and
41:47
kind of my like yeah aha moment it's i think a lot of it too is like you have to learn a dashboard or
41:52
you have to learn a new ui um with the mcp you really don't like you can even ask you like hey
41:58
what are all the things we can do with open video? And it can share, Oh, I can do, you know, X, Y, and Z
42:03
or prompt you on an onboarding flow that again, instead of in a dashboard
42:07
it's just you having a conversation with your chat bot and having it go and
42:12
execute on the things that you want to get done. So yeah
42:15
I just think that the barrier to utilizing things is just going to continue to
42:21
go down and down as, and, you know, and like I said, I mean
42:25
in the future instead of, I know this sounds fresh, but instead of a future where five different
42:31
people have to work on different parts of a project, it's, you've got, you know, five agents
42:35
that you basically go and tell them to do it and they just do it while you're working on other
42:39
things. So, we're going to see so many new companies come from this, so many, you know
42:45
one to two person operations and you can really, yeah, just integrate this into workflows. And I
42:50
think the opportunities are endless with with how you use it so so james and i want to give you guys
42:57
a digital collective action plan for this one homework do the audit go look at your top 10
43:06
most valuable videos that you think are valuable and that you love and maybe you had a little bit
43:11
of traction right then to the move you going to set up your home base you going to set it up you going to decide whether you going to i using terms and if you don understand it okay sub domain versus putting it versus a path Three connection You going to upload your brand kit And James and I are going to do a
43:28
workshop on this, on how you create a brand kit, but basically it's your tone, it's your voice
43:32
it's your colors, everything you upload it. And then you set your first hero video. That's the
43:38
thing that lives on the front of your page. You saw it as we were scrolling through
43:42
and then finally join the revolution using the digital collective partner link down below
43:49
do it down there okay and join us because we're doing this we are all in and we want you to join
43:56
us as well i i was i was on the i was on the fence for like 30 minutes i was
44:04
I told him about it and he said okay that's cool yeah like that's cool I'm like you know it's like I was like doubting Thomas
44:13
and then I so I'm not completely speaking out of school and I told y'all I said no you know what
44:19
I'm OG WordPress I'm gonna do that then I said no I don't want to do that I'm gonna build it
44:25
myself get that and then I got to playing with open video y'all listen y'all know I will tell
44:33
I think I even told you this, John. I said, I will let an organization know when their baby is ugly
44:37
And I hated you. I think I told you that. And I hated using that because I know you're expecting
44:42
So I would not. He'll never say that to you. I'll never say that in that context, but you get what I'm saying
44:50
I will let an organization know if what they're building doesn't hit the mark
44:54
or misses or maybe nice, maybe cool, but go back to the drawing board
45:00
Right. You got something here, man. Yeah, you, you, you do. I saw, you know
45:08
Karen, I'm the most non-corporate person. So I talk like, like that. You, you, you got something here. This is right
45:13
This thing right here, right here. Yeah. Reach out to me and Karen and Jan when he's not busy
45:21
but he's always busy. We will talk more in detail about this. We
45:25
I've told folks I'm not an influencer. I don't like that term. An advocate
45:29
we advocate for stuff that actually matters stuff that works that stuff that resonates
45:33
this right here this open dot video is is the truth so and i'll be quiet i'm sorry
45:39
you know us we don't we don't talk about things that we ourselves don't use or that we don't
45:46
think is a good thing that's just not it doesn't feel comfortable right and our followers know that
45:54
Our followers know that if we say it, we believe it and that we're using it
45:59
So keep that in mind, James. You know, we're both very much alike. Right
46:04
I know, James, you've been putting all these things. Check, you know, follow us. You have. Oh, I got things going on
46:09
Listen, I'm directing, producing. I'm the one man band over there. Listen, this is where it's at
46:15
ABC who? Listen, this is where it's at. OK. OK. You're giving me 80
46:19
I've got like 80. I'm like scattered here because I keep seeing things
46:24
Anyways, first of all, Jan, thank you for taking time out of your day to join us today
46:29
I know you've just moved. As James mentioned, you've got a baby on the way
46:34
You've got all this going on, and we appreciate you. We really do. We have great gratitude for you to come on and really explain it to our audience as to
46:41
what we already know why we like it, but it's really nice for you to be able to give us a
46:46
little bit more details as well. Yeah, no, absolutely. I love, I mean, we've done a few of these now, and I love being able to meet people and kind
46:54
to talk about it. And I think showing as well is just probably the best way to really get it to
46:59
click for people is like, this is everything we can do. So yeah, no, this has been really fun
47:04
Thank you guys. Has this been the best one though? I know you've done a few. Everyone's the best one
47:10
Oh no, I think I've, I don't know, this has been pretty fun. So I like this style too
47:15
just kind of chopping it up about tech like we love to. That's it. Karen, take us home
47:22
take us home we love you being here we know that you have a choice as to where you spend your time
47:28
you chose to spend it with James and Jan and I today on the digital collective we are appreciative
47:34
we are grateful go out give somebody an awesome day and we'll see you next time everyone
47:39
love that
#Business & Industrial
#Advertising & Marketing
#Small Business