I

was listening to both Cliff and Eric in their comments, and they both said things that I think are really interesting, especially in this context.

I think if you were to...

Survey 500 executives, large companies, people that are leading AI for some big businesses.

I'm finding it's almost split down the middle whether those leaders think AI will create jobs or they'll eliminate jobs.

Cliff was talking about the loss of human capital.

What I think they would unanimously agree on, though, is that the employees that are using and leveraging AI in their workflows will be those that get the jobs and retain the jobs.

To your points, though, now that it knows what AI slop looks like, it's probably not going to do it anymore, right? And so it's going to try to make it more and more human instead of less sloppy.

just lifts you.

That's what I find about football.

Since Noah got into football, Noah's football mad, obviously, I was saying this, and he's got me right back into football again, like when I was young, because I was football mad when I was young.

And then obviously you have kids and you don't have time for it, blah, blah, blah.

And then he's into it.

He's got me right back into it.

And what I love about it is the simplicity of it.

bet you must have gone through so much

And then with the help of that, you're enabling them to become, I don't know, business person or somebody who has a side hustle.

Yeah, you know, you've hit the nail on the head.

One thing I want to point out is when a creator uses our free tools to create content, they retain ownership of that content.

We provide the marketing, we provide the support, we provide the business development, pipelines, all of those kinds of things.

They have just, from a practical business perspective, they retain ownership of that content.

What you might find interesting is over a five-year period, we have over a 95% retention of our creator community, even though they own those assets and they could take them wherever they want themselves to go sell that content because they own it.

They choose to partner with us and they choose to sell it first on our marketplace and then through these other channels that we've talked about.

uh talking about like okay this is this is what it takes to understand how powerful this technology is this piece of technology is right great stuff so so james i think one of the biggest challenges we have in founders life is getting the eyeballs getting the traction getting people to know about our product would you be able to share the story when this the platform, DAS3, the freemium model was started, how did you manage to get your first, let's say, 10 or 100 customers? And then what is your current strategy in 2026 to get more eyeballs? So I want to compare both of them and I want to communicate it with my listeners that see how different it is for a startup and for a mature business.

We will start with James Thornton with DAZ3D.com. James, what's a secret you can share with our audience?

There is this balance between being able to do the little things in a business startup and in an entrepreneurial environment.

But doing that will almost certainly not lead to a success unless you balance it with a goal in mind, with seeing where you want to take the business.

So it's a little bit of reverse engineering, sort of like announcing we're going to put a man on the moon or a person on the moon and not really know how you're going to do it and then reverse engineer from there.

So do the little things, but do the little things that you've defined are important to reach your ultimate

How do you turn that around?

Well, generically, that's a pretty big question, right? It certainly sort of comes down to the type of company that you have.

I've been in tech, uh, and content development for most of my career, and it really does, at the end of the day, come down to just putting one foot in front of the other and not neglecting the simple things.

Again, Cliff referred to the fact that it's so important to leverage people around you, but he also talked about how he was the guy willing to do everything.

You know, I've emptied my own garbage cans for as long as I've had my career.

You know, I've done the simple things, the day-to-day steps.

Perhaps I could give you just a really brief anecdote.

So James, tell us what you were just talking about.

What did you think of it?

I think it's brilliant.

I think she's excellent because she's really good at-Not saying too much.

She listens, and she doesn't really tell people what to think.

She lets people find out for themselves, and she just asks sort of probing questions, but in a really understanding way.

And then she gives each side time to speak, which is really what it's about, isn't it? It's, it's about someone being there so that both sides can get to voice their opinions and be heard, and then hopefully they'll start to listen to each other rather than arguing.

Um, but it was-

Yeah

Oh, God

... you know, to do another take, so we don't wanna do another take, really.

So let's just do this.

We'll get it done.

Put a cou- couple of cameras on it, and we'll do it in one." "Okay, yeah, great." So I did the scene, and then got to the end.

I spr- I sprayed her with the hose, and it was absolutely hilarious.

I couldn't, I could not stop myself from laughing.

I don't know.