Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast.

My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you today.

Of course, this is your first time with us, a very, very warm welcome to you.

Make sure you like and subscribe and do all of that good stuff if you think

there's going to be some value to staying connected with us, which of course

I truly believe there will be.

And of course, if you're a regular, welcome back because

today I'm going to be talking about

how I use AI in my e-commerce businesses right now.

This is a big question I get asked a lot.

It's a big topic and we're going to get into it.

A stat I came across recently, which really surprised me is

56% of CEOs report a zero ROI from their AI investments.

In other words, there is zero ROI on their ai.

Oh, I love it.

Anyway, just little jokes that keep me amused really.

But I don't think we're, they're experiencing that zero ROI on their ai.

Not because AI isn't working, but I would venture to say it's probably

because we're not using it in a way that creates that ROI on our ai.

Anyway, enough for that.

So I, my experience here is most of us, like the idea of ai, some

of us are using it, the majority of us that are using it are dabbling with

it, sort of playing around the edges, not quite sure how to dig into

it and how to get the most out of it.

And because it's moving so fast, how do you keep up with the whole thing, right?

I thought we'd talk about it in this episode and hopefully move you a little

bit closer to getting an ROI from your ai.

Okay, that's honestly the last time.

So let me give you a quick overview of the tools that I'm currently using,

and then I'll do a little bit of a deep dive into each tool and why I

think each tool deserves its place in my tech stack in my e-com business.

Okay.

Now, across my whole company, organization, we currently use amongst

the whole team, including me, four tools.

Okay.

We've tried more.

And there are definitely lots and lots out there at the moment, but they

tend to be the four that we stick with.

Now, the main one that we use is Claude.

We probably pay more to Claude than any other,

software platform, with the exception of Klaviyo,

but with Claude, I personally have the Max plan subscription.

I don't know its specific name.

It's the Max Max plan, as high as I can go, because I do hammer it.

And it costs about 150 pounds a month plus VAT £180.

It's about $250, I guess.

$220, $250. You definitely don't need to spend that much money, by the way.

It's just, I hammer it and for the longest time I was on their

£90 a month plan, which was great.

But I just needed a little bit more with some of the stuff that we're doing.

The second one.

So we use Claude.

The second one is called Perplexity.

And again, I'm going to go into each one of these in detail.

But just to give you some idea of cost.

Currently, Perplexity costs about $20 a month.

For the sort of the platform that we're on.

I also

love Google NotebookLM, which is my third system, it's part of

their Google Gemini AI system.

I think I pay 20 bucks a month for.

For that.

I think I pay 20 bucks a month for, I really should check.

I think we just pay 20 bucks a month for the whole Google suite of AI

tools, of which NotebookLM is one.

And the fourth tool we use is also part of Google Suite.

You may have heard the name Nano Banana.

Or I suppose to my cousins across the pond, my nano banana.

Which actually stands better when you pronounce it that way.

But anyway, it's not actually a separate tool.

It is part of Google Gemini's sort of image generation model that went viral.

And I guess Nano Banana is a better name than image generation tool,

so, but that's part of Google Gemini as well.

Now, if I was on Shopify, which currently.

I am not specifically on Shopify with any of our e-com businesses.

I've talked about that before on the show.

There is a company, there is a possibility of one of our websites,

or a website that we're getting involved with potentially being on Shopify.

The reason I'm saying that and being slightly cagey, is if you are on

Shopify, if I was on Shopify there, there might be a fifth platform

that I would add to this mix.

Because ai is now available on Shopify.

It's called Shopify Magic, and Shopify Sidekick, and the

guys in the e-commerce Cohort groups have used it.

I personally haven't, like I say, our businesses aren't on Shopify,

but they have, and the, they.

Actually really, really like it.

They're loving it right now.

So if you are on Shopify, go and try Sidekick.

Maybe that would be the fifth one that I would add.

I think it's available on all plans, but it's definitely worth exploring and

like I said, it sort of comes,

recommended to me by the chaps in Cohort.

If you don't know what Cohort is, if you're new to the show, Cohort is a monthly,

group that you can connect with.

And every month we jump on Zoom, in the various groups.

And we just talk about eCommerce.

They're free to join.

You get to meet some sort of fellow eCommerce traveling,

the world of journey of eCommerce.

Some of them have big businesses, some of them are just starting

out, but it's really great.

We get that mix.

And the calls last for about I guess an hour or two.

I love them.

It's one of my favorite things we do every month actually, is the different

Cohort groups and just chatting with people about e-commerce, learning

from them and throwing ideas in.

And we're all.

Throwing ideas in and learning together and it's really, really good.

If you want to know more about that, go check out eCommerce

Podcast dot net slash Cohort.

I actually think you can go to, I'm just going to check it now.

This is really unprofessional.

I should've.

I should have done this beforehand, but I think if you go to eCommerce,

Cohort dot com takes you to that.

Yes, we have the domain and it's working.

So just go to eCommerce Cohort dot com.

If you can't remember any of the domain, it'll take you to the

exact page you need to go to anyway.

All of that said, the Shopify AI might be the fifth

one you want to add to your list.

So I think across the whole company, we probably spend about 3, 3 50, something

like that on ai, bearing in mind, I'm taking up the vast majority of that with

my Claude subscription and our dev team have some pretty.

They have the big subscription as well.

So I think that's about what, 4 50, 500 bucks a month?

US dollars, something.

Along those lines.

And what we did was we were actually spending quite a bit more.

And so what we have done is culled,

if that makes sense.

We sort of stripped back the.

AI tools that didn't make sense for us.

And so we definitely have stopped chasing the shiny objects, you know,

which I'm really bad for actually is just that.

I just come across 'em and go, oh, that sounds a good idea.

We could do that.

And we would try it and then we'd forget about it.

You know, some of the image generation stuff and things like that.

We've tried.

So we finally cut everything down.

We've simplified it and this tech stack of four AI tools work like

insanely well for us and our company.

Okay, now.

Full disclosure, this may well change in the future, starting like maybe tomorrow.

I don't know of anything that will be different tomorrow, to what we're

doing now, but it's ai, it's moving quick.

You don't know.

For example, one of the things that we did in this culling was

we dropped ChatGPT, the whole open AI thing.

We don't subscribe to that anymore other than the fact that we do have a few.

Again, just being totally honest, we have a few apps that use open

AI's Whisper, which transcribes things, and it does it super, super well.

But we dropped chat.

GPT is still a great tool, genuinely a great piece of ai,

but I just prefer Claude.

It's what I do.

There's a bunch of reasons, why I do.

So let's dig in.

Let's dig into each one of these tools.

And specifically how I am using them.

And I'm going to spend a bit of time explaining to you how I'm using Claude.

You might be like, Matt, surely it's easy.

You open up the app type stuff in and away you go, haha.

No, it's not.

Like, like that.

For those of you don't know, Claude is an AI assistant made

by a company called Anthropic.

Like ChatGPT, you can have conversations with it, you can ask it questions,

you can get it to write things, you can analyze documents, you can, it

can help you with all kinds of tasks.

And it, and like sort of basic ai, a lot of it is down to prompting.

And prompt engineering.

It does come in different versions, and you can use it through the,

a web interface, like in a browser.

You can use it on an app, like a desktop app or on your phone.

And it's also got this built in coding tool, which is actually what I use.

It's how I use it.

And that's called Claude Code.

Okay.

Now, Claude Code is basically, it is Claude.

It's the same system.

But it's, it's having Claude live inside your computer's terminal.

Which without getting too technical, if you're not sure, is the black

screen of texts that developers use.

You'll see that quite often.

So instead of chatting into a browser, what this means is Claude

can run directly on your computer and it can see your files on your computer,

it can run commands on your computer.

It can make changes to computer code.

And originally this was designed for coders and to do coding.

Right?

And it was like having a developer sit next to you who can actually

touch the keyboard in, who can code.

So why does this matter?

If you are not a coder and you're just, you know, something like you're using

Shopify, you're not writing code, you know where you've got, you've got a dev,

a dev team, you know, whatever, right?

You're not, you're not doing the code.

Why would you want to use Claude Code?

Why would I want to use Claude Code?

So imagine asking, say, ChatGPT to fix something in a

document or basic clause, right?

And it's going to reply with the comment, okay, well here's what you need to change.

And then you would copy it and you would paste it into your document,

or you would download the document from ChatGPT and you would save

that somewhere on your computer and you do whatever you need to do.

Right?

That is the normal sort of Claude / ChatGPT behavior.

Imagine if you could just have AI make that change for you.

So it changes the file, right, right there.

Right.

And it tests it, it tests it once it's changed it to make sure it works and

then it can move on to the next task.

Right.

So that's, that's in essence Claude Code.

It doesn't just advise, it actually does.

In relation to the files on your computer, and the key

thing this then means is it has.

Context.

Okay.

So it, Claude Code then can see your whole project.

So it could see your whole coding project, it could see,

what's going on in there.

It could see all the files, it could read them, and it could understand

how all the different files and pieces connect and it can make

changes that fit with everything else.

So rather than giving it isolated snippets of information,

you know that sort of give it part context or you have to figure

out how to plug that all in.

It's way more than that.

So think of it like the difference between texting a plumber for

advice versus having the plumber in your house with their tools.

Okay.

That's a really good sort of analogy of Claude Code's.

Okay.

It's the plumber in your house with your tools now.

Stay with me here because we are going to supercharge this a little bit.

Okay?

Now what I do then, personally with Claude Code, bearing in mind it can

interact directly on my computer with files and make changes to those files.

Okay?

I combine Claude Code with a tool called Obsidian.

Now if you haven't heard of obsidian, it's basically a note

taking app, which I appreciate.

Does not sound exciting in any way.

Why am I telling you about a note taking app?

Get ready.

Okay.

Most of us use note apps like, I've used Apple Note, I've

used Evernote, I've used Craft.

Never really played around with Notion.

I know that's a big deal for a lot of people.

Google Docs, you know, I've played around with all of them.

So why obsidian?

Why is this different?

Why, why do I use it?

And more importantly, what's this got to do with Claude Code?

Well, remember,

Claude Code interacts with files directly on your computer, and obsidian

might be another note taking app.

Okay?

But it's got one crucial difference.

To the other note taking apps, your and what it does is when it creates

the notes, okay, they in effect become very simple text files

sitting in a folder on your computer.

And if you're used to obsidian, it's called a vault.

And so you have a vault, which is a folder full of text files.

They're not locked away in someone else's cloud like my Apple notes are in iCloud.

Okay.

When I was using craft, uh.

Thus the notes were stored in their system somehow and they

synchronized down to my computer.

But

not only does Obsidian store the files on my computer, they're in

this plain text formats, right?

They're in a format that other apps can use and access.

Okay?

So think of, think of them as like a. I don't know.

A a, a Google Doc or a Microsoft Word document, but much simpler now.

Stay with me.

We're going to go a little bit deeper.

The files that obsidian creates on your computer are something

called markdown files, which if you've never heard of markdown,

it's just a way of formatting text using very simple characters.

So you have these sort of text files, which carries some kind of

formatting, for example, if you wanted.

A line of text to be the equivalent of a heading or your fur, your

main heading, you would use an asterisk, or a, sorry, a hashtag.

You'd put a hashtag in front of the text and that signifies

that this is heading one.

If I put two hashtags, it's a heading two.

So you can see as you're typing documents, it's really easy

to just go one, two hashtags.

This is heading two.

Type the heading and go to the next line.

You can use asterisk to help identify bold text, for example.

Um.

It sounds maybe a little bit more complicated than it actually is.

It takes literally like five or 10 minutes to pick the, pick up the

idea of what markdown files are, and they're just really quick, easy

ways to create text documents now.

This is how Obsidian works.

It makes these markdown files for all of your notes.

And the beauty of obsidian is why do I need obsidian?

I could just put them in any text document you could.

But the beauty of obsidian is, is it, is it formats that so, you're

not staring at symbols all day.

Actually looks quite, quite lovely on the screen.

You know, it's got some nice formatting.

The other cool thing about obsidian is it has this internal linking

system so you can link notes together.

And so every day I write a daily note and I'll put in that daily note

the different things that I've been working on, and I can link through.

To those da, to those items, to those projects, to whatever it is,

using a very simple internal linking system that obsidian has.

So what this means is over time you build this sort of web of connected thinking,

your ideas, your projects, your meeting notes, your daily notes, all the research,

everything links up, and you're in effect building your own personal Wikipedia.

And so people, including me, will often call this building your second brain.

So that's what Obsidian does.

It's brilliant for note taking, for interconnecting files and

building this second brain.

So let's plug that into Claude Code and see where the magic happens.

Okay.

Because your notes are just simple text files in a folder.

They're not trapped inside an app's database on the cloud somewhere.

Claude Code can work with those files directly.

It can read through them hundreds.

I mean, I've got thousands of notes on my system.

It can understand.

How those notes connect.

It can create new notes and it can slot them right into my system.

Okay, so a simple workflow here might be, like I say, I capture my thinking

in obsidian throughout the day.

I have a daily note.

I write into the different project files.

Meeting notes, transcripts, blog posts, even, you know, EP episode transcripts.

I can put them in there.

They're all in my vault.

And I write this sort of note that connects 'em all together.

I know where they are.

It's a simple folder system, simple file system in effect.

So then Claude Code, the second thing comes across all of that,

and at the end of the day, it sort of distills my daily note.

And it makes sure, make sure, make sure that everything's organized,

everything's in the right place.

It pulls out tasks for me so I know what I'm doing.

It updates project files and it connects dots that I've missed.

Okay.

Which is beautiful.

So the third thing then, so I create the notes first thing, second thing,

Claude gets involved, and so then.

The third thing to bear in mind with this flow is everything stays on your

computer in your files, which you own and only you can open, right?

So there's a security thing now, which is quite nice.

It's a bit like having a brilliant assistant who can read your entire

notebook collection in seconds and actually file things properly without

you ever handing your data to a third party, which is, is a beautiful thing.

So I hope you're with me still on this, right?

This combination of obsidian, which is all my thinking, my second brain and

Claude Code, which is my AI assistant who can see and act on the thinking on

that thinking, well, this is genuine, genuinely one of the most practical uses

of AI that doesn't really require massive technical ability beyond the ability.

To type.

Okay, so.

I get excited about Claude Code and Obsidian, and it's one of my big things at the moment.

All our company information, for example, our branding documents, our

playbooks, like on email marketing, the playbook that I gave you a couple

months ago on the stuff we did around narrative binding that's in there.

Our content plans, all past scripts from the eCommerce Podcast

episode, you know, the blog posts, the transcripts are on there.

I can search them, I can have Claude interact with them.

Everything is in its own separate markdown file stored in my obsidian vault, or

just a simple folder on my computer.

And again, it's secure because it's not storing stuff in the cloud, it's just

working on local files on my computer.

So Claude Code then knows our brand voice.

It knows our product range.

It knows what we've tried before.

It knows what's worked.

So I'm hoping you can see why this matters because AI needs

context and it has all the context it could possibly need.

So the default way I think most of us use ai, certainly I did for a

long time, was to open up a chat.

On a browser window or, you know, using the app, type in a question

and I would get my generic answer.

And then we realized, well, we could actually give it some kind of

context maybe with project files.

That was, that was helpful.

But it did feel a little bit like every single time.

You used it, it was like, you know, you're hiring a new employee, right?

They've got a little bit of information, but then they're,

they're still quite dangerous.

And so, felt like every morning they didn't really

need know a whole great deal.

And you'd have to sort of explain your business again and again and again.

Right.

But what I've built with Claude Code and Obsidian

is more like having a team member who has spent six months reading

every document you have ever written.

And the difference then is night and day.

So take writing my ideas out for this podcast episode.

I can use Claude Code, I can brainstorm that.

Right?

And because I'm using, because I'm doing that brainstorm in obsidian.

Then that's stored with all my notes as local text files.

It's got access.

Then Claude's got access to all my previous notes, all the

scripts from previous podcasts.

We've got all the transcripts, the blog posts.

It's got my voice guide, my brand documents.

It's got access to my complete slingshot framework.

How I think and understand about e-commerce, it's

got access to all of that.

It knows how I write what I've covered before and what our business context is.

And so you can see when you put all this together, the beauty of this is

Claude learns as well and it, because it can update its own files when it

learns, when I give it more info, it can update its system files.

Because I'm giving it more context every day.

That system is constantly staying up to date.

It's a remarkable thing.

Now, I don't think it's a common setup.

I've not many met many people that use it, but I do think it is properly powerful.

I've explained the system to quite a few people and it's, I

think it's quite transformative.

There are some videos on YouTube if you want to find out more.

If you're using any kind of note system.

That stores plain text files on your computer, whether it's

obsidian or something else that you've maybe found, you could.

Use this system.

And for me, when I stumbled across it, I thought, actually, I'm going to do that.

That makes all the sense in the world.

To me, that's going to solve so much headache I have with ai.

It's going to boost my productivity and it's going to make everything run a lot quicker.

And so I, the start of that, which actually was only, three months

ago, at the time of recording, three months ago, three and a half months ago.

Anyway, I spent, two solid days.

Exporting my notes from my note taking app at the time.

Which was craft.

I exported all of those as markdown files and I imported them into my obsidian

vault, but I cleaned them up as well.

That's why it took two days.

The whole operation would've taken an hour, but I wanted to go

through them, and do a bit of housekeeping because it was really

needed, and absolutely worthwhile.

So I'm glad I spent the time doing it.

And since then, the whole thing has just gone from strength to strength.

Okay, so Claude Code is my thinking partner, my co-pilot, if you like,

for building, for creating, for doing a whole bunch of stuff.

So let's talk about perplexity.

What, what is it about perplexity that I like, given that, you know,

I've just wiped lyrical about Claude Code and obsidian.

There's a number of things.

Every Wednesday morning I walk from my house to the office.

It's one of my favorite times of the week.

It takes about an hour and a half, and for me it's Prayer time, it's just

thinking stuff through, processing, but it's also learning.

And this is where perplexity comes in.

I love in perplexity this chat feature, which it has, which is where you

can have a voice conversation with it and it will talk back to you.

So, the other day I was in the van, I had like a 30 minute drive.

I just put this voice feature on.

I just, nothing to do with e-commerce.

I was just like, why did the Roman Empire fall?

Just this question in the back of my head.

I had some thoughts around it and I just wanted to clarify.

I must have spent 45 minutes just going back and forth in conversation,

with their chat feature.

I absolutely love that feature, but that's not the main reason I use perplexity.

I use Perplexity when I need to research something specific.

I will open up perplexity on my computer or my phone and I will go for it.

So for example, I mentioned the episode we did a couple months ago

about narrative binding, which if you don't know what that is, it's a really

powerful idea for writing product copy.

For the products you sell on your e-commerce site.

Now, I'm a big fan of this idea and I've spent a lot

of time thinking about it.

And that whole episode came about because I spent the day locked away

doing a lot of research on the topic.

And I did that research with perplexity.

And the great thing about perplexity, the reason why I like it for research

is because you can sense check.

It gives you all of the sources, so it will give you some information,

and then there'll be a link to the source where it got that information from.

Which is awesome because let's be real, AI has the ability, an extraordinary

talent to do this whole hallucination thing quite well, doesn't it?

It really, really does.

And so it's good to verify.

And you can follow the links through the sources and see what makes

sense or what doesn't make sense.

And I'll tell you what, I came away from that research session.

It was, I spent literally like a whole day doing it.

I got so engrossed in it.

I came away from that knowing that strategic product copy optimization

delivers, measurable substantial conversion improvements, which

is all very AI speak, isn't it?

Measurable, conversion improvements, et cetera, et cetera.

What it actually did, it, to put it in real language, is it

gave me the confidence to invest a little bit more time and energy.

Into that area by looking at the research, by looking at case studies

and seeing how other people were using that idea, and then understanding how to

apply that to my own business as well.

The result of that day was a 30 page document on the topic.

There's a lot of stuff in there, let me tell you.

And all that learning then became the backbone of the episode, which is episode

2 74, all about narrative binding.

If you've not listened to it, check it out.

It's really good episode.

So perplexity is a great piece of AI when it comes to doing really deep research.

I know now it's got new features like computer and it's trying to compete

with Claude Code or Claude Cowork, which is sort of another version.

It's more sort of user friendly version of my Claude Code obsidian, setup.

It started to do things like that, but I use it specifically for deep research.

That's where I sort of got used to it.

So I've got Claude Code with obsidian.

I have perplexity.

Like I said to you, the next tool on my list is Google's NotebookLM, and

this is a different beast entirely, and for me has a very different use case.

So I mentioned that perplexity will go to the web and it'll do

a whole chunk of research around a topic like narrative binding.

It will come back with its finding and give you the links to those.

Sources, Google NotebookLM is a little bit like that, but I give

it the sources to look at and it restricts itself to those sources.

Why would I want to do that?

So let's say I want to learn about a topic or I'm trying to synthesize

large volumes of information.

This is where NotebookLM sort of becomes your co-pilot for

getting smarter and faster?

I think.

Lemme give you an example.

Yesterday, I wanted to spend a little bit of time learning about negotiation.

The topic intrigues me, and the reason this came about was I had breakfast

with a friend, and he recommended to me the book, Getting to Yes.

I'd not read it.

I had read the book, Never Split the Difference with Chris Vo

and thought it was a great book.

But I'd not read.

Getting to Yes, which was Harvard's Strategy for Negotiation.

And so I got that book and realized actually these, the, they

approached negotiation in a, in, in, there's some similarity between the

two books, but there's some things where they, they're quite different.

So.

What I did, because reading a book is great and you get some ideas,

but I actually want to download the information into my brain and learn it.

Which for me means doing a whole bunch more stuff than just reading.

So I uploaded my, notes, my research and some other

stuff I'd found on the web.

I uploaded, I uploaded those to a notebook in NotebookLM.

Now I think you can add up to 300 sources of information.

And that can be blog posts, it could be YouTube videos, it can be

audio files, it can be a PDF, it can be text files like from your

obsidian vault, whatever it is.

You can upload that to your notebook and Google NotebookLM will

restrict itself to that information.

So when it comes to negotiation, I can ask NotebookLM questions

and it will give me answers from the research and the notes that I uploaded.

It doesn't give me answers from the web, okay?

It keeps its answers strictly to my documents, which is a great way for me to

ask questions and also learn from large volumes of information that I may have.

So I specifically want to learn.

The Getting to Yes, the Never Split the Difference, the and sort of what

that means amongst the two systems and what that might mean for my businesses.

So when I'm talking to NotebookLM, I want it to restrict itself to

that information, which is great.

And technically I can now do that with Claude Code and the

Obsidian Vault, but I think Google NotebookLM is a little bit.

Stronger in that area, but for me,

the most amazing feature about Google NotebookLM, is that you can have

it generate 20 minute audio files.

Now, these audio files.

It generates based on the what you want it to do.

So with the negotiation, I wanted an overview of the two systems.

It generated a 20 minute audio file.

In essence, it gave me a podcast.

Okay, and this podcast is two voices having a conversation

about the topic of negotiation.

I love podcasts.

I'm a big fan of listening to podcasts.

So what this gives me is a podcast around a very specific topic that I'm

trying to learn and understand about.

It's like podcasts on demand.

It's like you calling me and going, Matt, can you do a 20 minute

podcast on, email marketing?

In France selling flowers to women in age 50 to 60.

I mean, you can get really super specific, you know, and I go away, do that research,

come back and do a 20 minute podcast on it to help you and your business.

You've got that with Google NotebookLM. And it's the most extraordinary thing.

So if I take this case, like I said, negotiation, I

listened to that podcast.

I call it a podcast.

Is it a podcast?

It's an audio file, isn't it?

It's an overview.

I listened to that thing this morning and it was a remarkable

overview of the key information in a, sort of this audio conversation

base, which, like I say, works super well for me and it's so well done.

That I think it's pretty much impossible to tell them apart from actual humans.

Now, that's both scary and fascinating at the same time.

But if I'm trying to learn about a topic, I can upload my notes, my

information into NotebookLM and I can have it generate a bunch of different

podcast episodes for me about the different aspects of that, and I can

listen to those whilst I'm out walking.

To the office every Wednesday morning.

And so, you know,

if you fancy creating your own podcast around a topic that's

going to help you learn, go for it.

I mean, I love it.

I love, love, love that feature.

Okay, so let's move on to the last tool.

Nano banana.

Nano banana, Google Gemini's image generation system.

Yes, nano banana.

It's so much better, isn't it?

Than, than the other name.

So what I use this for, I use this product for lifestyle images,

product lifestyle shots.

So what happens here is you can take a, a product photograph,

upload it to Gemini, and then have it generate, products, shots,

lifestyle shots in different contexts.

Okay?

So the stupidest example that I could think of was the

very first time I tried it.

I uploaded a picture of our Omega-3, which if you're

watching on YouTube, is this here?

Not that you can see.

I need to cover my eyes.

There you go.

It take,

So, yeah, we've got this Omega-3 from our supplement site.

And the thing about our Omega-3, you'll have heard me talk about

this before, if you regular on the show, is it is fish friendly, okay?

Because the Omega-3 in those supplements comes from

algae and not from fish.

Fish don't make Omega-3.

Fish ingest Omega-3 from the algae.

So we just take it from the algae and as we like to say, cut out the middle fish.

And it's one of its unique selling points.

Every jar of Omega-3 you get from us saves the lives of 50 fish, which

is, you know, just fascinates me still.

And it's the purest, strongest form you can get.

So we've got a really great product.

It's a really good hero product for us.

And it worked super well.

So I took a shot of Omega-3, which was on a, I think it was on a transparent

background, or it may have been on a white background, I can't remember.

But I uploaded that to Google.

Gemini and I said to it, right, I want you to take this bottle of

Omega-3 and put it so it's like being held up slightly by the ocean.

I want the sun setting behind it and I want dolphins jumping over it, sort of

making that heart shape as dolphins do.

And I want it to be as realistic as possible.

I mean, it is the cheesiest image.

Idea that I've ever had my whole life.

But I just wanted to see, it was so well done.

I was like, we will never use that image, obviously.

But the fact that we could do that was amazing and just playing

around with it was great fun.

So, like I say, you can take product photos and generate them

in different contexts, different settings, different moods.

So you can take a product photo on a plain background.

You can put it on a kitchen counter, you can put it in the hands of kids.

You can do, I mean, there's all kinds of things that you could do.

And there's no need for the expensive studio setup, right.

I mean, there's no way I'm getting dolphins to simultaneously jump over

a bottle of Omega-3 while the ocean.

Lifts it up, it's just not going to happen.

But for AI it was a pretty straightforward thing to do.

Now, full disclosure, because I know I'm going to get asked.

Yes.

We still use, our photographer Lindy, who is just awesome.

She's brilliant.

And AI supplements what Lindy does.

AI is not replacing Lindy and.

This, I think is true of all AI tools, right?

They're supplements.

They are co-pilots.

They're not always replacements.

So I think learn to use AI as your co-pilots is the way forward

for me, for your website, social media, quick lifestyle

images, all of that sort of stuff.

Use nano banana.

It's brilliant, but use it as a co-pilot.

I will say this, video generation tools like vo and similar ones

are starting to make some really interesting waves, aren't they?

We haven't actually played around with them that much yet.

Played around a little bit with them, but I, not enough for me to be able to talk

with confidence about it on the show.

They are definitely on our horizon.

But for me it was all about getting the foundations in place where we really

start to try and get complicated things.

So that for me was all image stuff.

So, you know, try nano banana.

It's not perfect, but it is pretty good for your website, social media stuff.

A fraction of the cost.

The only thing you've really got to do well with that is write

the prompt and give it context.

But guess what?

If you use Claude Code and obsidian, then Claude Code's got all of that context.

You can use Claude Code and say, write me a prompt to use on Google's nano

banana that gives it enough context.

This is the kind of thing that I want.

So please write a, a really great prompt and it will write

the prompt for you, which you can then paste into nano banana.

Your whole life becomes a lot easier.

And actually what you could also do if you really wanted to supercharge it, is

you would go to perplexity and go, right, I want to do some research on how to write

the best prompts to generate the best images from nano Banana, specifically

these types of images that I wanted.

Do I want it to take product shots and I want it to create

these lifestyles type shots.

I want it to be on the website.

So I want both a, a sort of landscape version and a square

version and a portrait version.

I want this to be high res. I want 'em to be, playful in nature.

I want this sort of color tone to the image.

Whatever it is, right?

You'll go away to perplexity, have it go away, do some research, do some,

and use the deep research feature.

It'll go away and it'll come back.

You'll go back and forth, get a whole chunk of research.

You then put that research into Claude Code and Obsidian,

or put it into obsidian.

You tell Claude Code.

Here's a whole bunch of research we've done around how to write prompts.

I want you to write a really detailed playbook, using that.

As the skeleton, as the foundation, as the principles, but figure out

how that all applies to our business and write me a detailed playbook.

Then it writes you a playbook which you store in your vault.

So when you ever need to create an image, you go right Claude, using our

Google image, nano banana playbook, I want you to write for me a prompt

that will take a product image and create this kind of output and it will

create a, I mean, you're talking about.

Creating a prompt that is so specific and so context rich, you can put that

into nano banana and voila, everything suddenly becomes a lot easier.

And because you've got the playbook written you, you then go back to

next time you want to do another image.

It's already got all that context there, right?

It's already got that context there.

And in six months time you'll go back, you'll take that.

Notebook, you'll put it into perplexity and say, this is our

current notebook for image generation.

It was done six months ago.

What has changed in the last six months that needs to now update in here?

It'll go away, do some more research.

You'll give that back to Claude and the whole process starts again.

So you're always up to date.

That'd be one way to supercharge it.

Okay.

That is my current AI stack.

So hopefully you found this helpful.

Now I am rolling the AI out in our company and everyone in our

team uses AI with one exception.

I'm not going to name names.

They know who they are,

but here's the thing, right?

I found even in our own office adoption.

Was slow for ai and we're a tech company, right?

Even the dev team, were slow to use Claude Code and I wonder if this

is because we don't understand it.

And let's be frank, I don't think AI has always lived up to the hype.

And we may, you may have been like me, you may have spent

more time trying to sort out ai.

Sort of output than doing the actual job that AI was supposed

to help within the first place.

And I, I get that frustration having been there on many occasions.

But I also get that AI is moving at such a rapid pace.

Even this episode may well date quickly.

I don't know.

And I might have to do another one, an update probably in six or 12 months time.

I'm definitely going to have to do an update, aren't I,

to talk about what's happened.

But neither of those things really should be a reason that you don't

do anything where AI is concerned.

You know, I think there's a real fear factor here.

It does feel alien.

I get it.

We've got different competence levels across our team,

different technical levels.

We've got the dev team that's going to use it more for coding the marketing team

that's going to use it more for content.

But it's my responsibility in my company to make sure everyone's

getting better and better, that we have an AI policy and that we are

growing in our learning, because I don't think it's going to go anywhere.

I could be wrong, I just don't see it right now.

And even for some of the, say our admin team, we use in, you know, my system,

Claude Code and Obsidian, it's easy for me to create specific prompts that they use.

So they might not have the Claude Code Obsidian set up.

They use Claude and Project Files, so I can give it the context

and the prompts for those project files and they can use those.

It's just, it's really straightforward, right?

Like, the prompts we used in the narrative binding episode,

an SEO product description is the one that I've mentioned.

Well, guess what?

Our team who, who look after the website are using those exact prompts.

They're all inlaws and they're just using them.

They're putting the product information in and getting the

output out, which is great.

So that's sort of what we found out with the transition.

And I think the real lesson for me with AI is it's not, I

don't think it's going anywhere.

There is a lot of hype around it.

So understanding how to use it specifically for your business

I think is where it's at.

And the good news is you do not need to be a power user.

You really don't, you just need to find the use cases that, that sort of

help you do what you need to do better.

Right?

I think that's the key.

Like, like for me,

the, one of the beautiful things about AI is if I get stuck and I don't

know what I'm supposed to do next.

I just ask the ai, I go, I'm stuck here.

I don't understand this, or explain this, or what's the next step?

And you know what?

It's starting to really get smart because it's been really, really helpful anyway.

I hope this has sparked some ideas for you, and I hope you have the courage

to go and try some of these things.

And like, you know, like I always do on these solo episodes, I have put together

a freebie for you this month, which is my guide to using AI in e-commerce.

It covers the tools that I mentioned, simple getting, starting guides, and

of course I've added some more of the prompts in there that's going to help you

get started, with some of them.

And I've also added a priority matrix.

Which is going to help you know what to try and where to start because

I think a lot of this stuff feels overwhelming and because of the

overwhelm we don't start anywhere.

So just use that to kind of, sort of answer a few questions.

It'll help you figure out where you are right now and then make

some decisions based on that.

You will of course find the link to said freebie in the show notes or in

the description if you're on YouTube.

But of course you can head over to the website eCommerce Podcast dot net.

Just click on the resources link and you'll find it.

There.

No problem at all.

So go check that out.

It's a free download and it will be super, super helpful for you.

Let me, let me close this episode with a challenge.

Start with one thing, just one thing.

Pick the use case that resonates most with where you are at right now and just give

it a right old go for the next two weeks.

Not a quick play, but a proper go.

We're going to learn what this does and means for us.

You're going to get your head around it.

I'm going to watch YouTube videos that talk about your specific use case.

I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, but I'm going to give it a right go.

I do not think.

I know there's for, again, this is just my brain and where it's at.

I could be wrong.

I do not think AI is replacing us.

I think it's definitely going to replace some jobs, don't get me wrong.

But I think.

Some of the roles it will replace.

Yes.

But for most of us, I think AI is a co-pilot, and I think that's

a really good way to look at it.

I think the roles that'll be replaced will be the people that

don't actually learn how to use AI to help them with their role.

The people that learn how to use AI as a co-pilot, I think will be some of

the most valuable people on the planet.

That's just my own personal opinion.

Time will tell whether I was right or wrong.

And I think the people that will figure out or figure that out are

going to be the ones that can pivot quickest, if that makes sense.

And it's going to give you, certainly in your econ business, a bit of an

edge, because I would say 98% of people aren't doing the stuff that we

just, the stuff that we've talked about.

In this episode, it just puts you above everything.

So yeah, just my thoughts.

I'd love to know what you think.

Of course.

So reach out to me on social media, on LinkedIn especially.

That's Find me at Matt Edmundson.

I would love to know how you're using ai, what your questions about AI

are, where you think it's going to go.

Because this whole topic I find absolutely fascinating.

And of course, if no one has told you yet today, let me be the first.

You are awesome.

Yes, you are awesome.

It's just a burden you have to bear whether you use AI or whether you don't.

Now.

Like I said, the freebies available on the website eCommerce Podcast dot net.

Check out Cohort as well.

If you'd like to come join us in the Cohort groups, it'll

be great to see you in there.

It is a free community to join.

There's definitely no strings attached and we just all help

each other out, grow in eCommerce.

So hopefully I'll see you in there.

But that's it from me.

Have a wonderful week wherever you are in the world.

I will see you next time.

Bye for now.