The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Google’s Veo3 Changed Video Forever. Here’s What It Can Actually Do w/ Sam ⏐ Ep. #190

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.comI sat down with Sam Thompson again to dive deep into how he’s actually using Veo3 to create viral style AI videos and turn them into real business opportunities. We got tactical on everything from building niche media accounts to running ads for local businesses using short form, hyper specific clips. Sam shared his full prompting framework, how he uses ChatGPT to help write scripts, and even the tricks he’s learned after spending over $1,000 testing different styles. We also talked about how this isn’t just a gimmick. If you’re playing with these tools now, you’re learning skills that’ll be wildly valuable when the tech levels up. You can find Sam on X/Twitter (https://x.com/ImSamThompson) and check out what he’s building at https://www.unlimitedcontent.com/Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Exploring VO3: The Future of Video Generation03:00 Creative Applications of VO3 in Advertising05:46 Crafting Effective Prompts for VO309:10 Innovative Business Ideas with VO312:05 The Evolution of Content Creation and Monetization14:57 The Future of AI in Video Production

I can't stop thinking of how many business ideas people could start just with V-O-3. This is not going to be an eight-second cap for very long. They're going to figure out character continuity product placements. And the people that are sitting there being like, I'm not going to start doing this until the AI is good enough are going to be behind on the learning curve when it gets good enough. Because there's somebody like me that's sitting here fighting through the issues with the moment that it's better, I already know what to do.

It was just a gimmick. Right? It's just fun. It's sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you have any prompting tips on V-O-3? Okay, about a month ago, I talked about V-O-3, Google's new video generation tool and how groundbreaking it is. Well, I had Sam on the pot again, and he is spending thousands of dollars on V-O-3 credits. I had him share his screen. And for those only listening, I read the prompts, so you won't miss a thing. We talked about ad agencies you can build a V-O-3, selling to restaurants, selling ads. You're going to love this. Very actionable. Please share with a friend and enjoy. What else have you been experimenting with lately?

V-O-3 with the audio is really, really good. You just have to understand how to use it for a specific use case. And there's a couple barriers that you have to be aware of, right? And so the biggest issue that I ran into that you can't go longer than eight seconds, which is okay in most cases, except for like, I'm trying to shoot 15-second Facebook ads. I'm not trying to necessarily replace the usual.

UGC creators, but the process of getting UGC. You want more creatives. Yeah, like I need scale. And if I can go and sit in VO3 for an hour and a half and get 20 versions of people talking in different scripts and hooks and all of that, what we end up doing is we run those. And then we say, oh, this hook is our highest performer. Let's go have like an actual UGC creator going, we'll invest more money in that person to go do it. It's like I can make 15 ads, 20 ads for $100 to then make a smarter bet on my

one ad for $100 or my two ads for $200 with an actual creator. The eight second cap part is actually okay except for the fact that you can't get character or voice continuity in another clip, right? Because if I put in the same prompt twice, it's not the same guy. They also have the ability to extend. And so I think people are doing extend the clip, extend the clip, which is awesome. But I think they're layering in post-production 11 labs voices or whatever to like make that work. Greg Eisenberg had that podcast with the dude that made the puppy commercial. I didn't see that.

But he was taking all of Google V-O-3 videos that he had made and putting them into final cut and doing post-production editing to that. I'm not doing all of that. I like download the eight second video, toss it into the captions app and let it rip. And so the one that I actually thought about for you, dude, I got to find, I'll find the account and send it to you. But it's this account on on Instagram that is basically like Gen Z meets Bible stories. And so it's Google V-O-3. They're like interviewing Moses at the parting of the red sea. I saw that.

So funny. Like Daniel and the Lions Den? Yes, dude. And it's at like a hundred thousand plus followers, dude. Like it's not nothing. And I think there's niche accounts that you could go and do that with. It's like comedy, right? So like those videos are all interviewing biblical figures or like people in biblical times.

And they all have some funny commentary around what they saw. They're like, dude, I didn't not believe Jesus. but now that he's like whatever right like all of the the kind of humor and i think that there's a world where there's more opportunity to do stuff like that and so like one that i was playing with was like street interviews right with this alien character where his question was like talking on earth like he would just ask people funny questions of like oh you guys have to work 40 hours a week and pay for your own health care and call that freedom and then like goes to right and the girls like yeah right like and like that's just me playing around with it but i think that there's like

interesting little niche accounts that like are fun for people to play with and that you can do in an eight second clip and you can get the character to be kind of enough the same there's another guy that does it with it's like british people it's all ai and it's like a younger british guy that's like interviewing older british people right like grandma's style and they say like the most of pocket stuff. It's so funny. Like tons of like sexual innuendos and like talking about partying and like all this stuff. And they go crazy viral. Do you have any like prompting tips on V-O-3? Like what has worked for you? Like especially when scripting like what do you prompts look like? What's the structure of them? Obviously it depends on like what kind of video you're

creating. But most of the time I start with it's like setting. Right. And so like a business sidewalk in a urban neighborhood at sunset it's overcast then it's like vibe right so it's handheld style street interview gritty like you can figure out what words kind of show like and it's it's why i've spent $1,200 on it's like i've been testing all of the different like what does this word mean what does that word mean and then you have characters right so like It'll be, you know, this is a street style interview where character A is interviewing character B, right? And then you say, character A is a humanoid alien with blue skin and a glowing neck tattoo. He's wearing a black hoodie and jeans as if he's trying to blend in with the people around him.

Character B is a 45-year-old woman with brown hair who's athletic and wearing white tank top and black pants. It's like dialogue to like character A. And you can, oh, the other piece that's interesting is you can also control their personalities. And so in each character, you can be like, he is relaxed and calm and confident. And then you can be like, she is anxious or shy. right and it controls kind of like how they interact with each other which is cool and then you have dialogue and flow right so it's character a asks and then you put the script in and then holds the mic up to character b here's what they say the other issue that i run into all the time on it is they love to put subtitles that aren't the actual subtitles it's like not in english like yeah almost like when you do canva like auto expand on photos and like random russian characters will just show up. It's like that. And so then I'll put at the bottom, no subtitles, no whatever, to try to get that to go away. The other piece that I actually learned from that Greg Eisenberg

podcast, which is the first time I've ever watched this podcast. I love his Twitter. Just haven't watched it. But the guy was like, take the quotes off of the script, like the quotation marks of like, this person says, and then I was putting it in quotes. And he was like, take that off and you'll see a lower percentage of them have subtitles, which is true. Interesting. The other case that does it is don't say, I used to say, this is a TikTok style video. Once I took the word TikTok out, less subtitles. Interesting.

Okay. Yeah, very interesting. Now I just say this is a handheld video on an iPhone. Yeah, yeah. Are you able to share your screen and show like anything that, like what your prompt has put out? Yeah. I got to see this. I got you.

The other piece that you can do is get chat GPT to help you write prompts. All right. All sorts of stuff, dude. What's your go-to bar in Hermosa Beach? Oh, it depends on the vibe, but been loving Tower 12 this year, just good vibes and good drinks and their pizza is underrated. Right. So, like, I run the local newsletter for the South Bay here, right? Yeah.

I've been struggling. It's like totally a four fun project that Lauren and I are doing. a couple thousand subscribers just like we like doing it well you're going to vertically integrate into being the mayor right wasn't yeah 100% catch me hermosa 2046 baby i'm dude it's coming dude don't worry about me yeah we're good we're gonna start to do social content right yeah so like but like i don't have the time to do that and so i was like okay what's what's a sustainable content style that i can do and it's street interviews. Right?

Can I see the prompt of that one? Dude, of course you can see the prompt. All right, just for those listening, it says, street style interview video featuring a 55-year-old male surfer being interviewed on a beach during the day. It's overcast and cloudy. The interviewer is off camera, but a plain black handheld microphone is extended into the frame

from the right side. I love how specific that is. The camera is handheld a little shaky in classic street interview style with natural lighting and a slight fish eye effect. There are sitting noises in the background, cars, faint voices, ambient sounds, dialogue. Interviewer. What is your go-to bar in Hermosa Beach? Surfer. Oh, I love how you put, oh. Oh, depends on the vibe, but the loving Tower 12 this year, just good vibes and good drinks and

their pizza is underrated. Can you play the video again now that we have the prompt in mind? What's your go-to bar in Hermosa Beach? Oh, it depends on the vibe, but been loving Tower 12 this year, just good vibes and good drinks and their pizza is underrated. What's your go-to bar and So good. Like so many use cases for this. Like any restaurant in the world could buy a bunch. And this is like, so you can see on this prompt, it's the same vibe, right? And so like you can figure out like once you have one style that works, right?

Then you just say, okay, we're going to change this character and we're going to change the script. Right. And so that one changed it. And this is me trying to be like create something viral. Like for reference, if anyone. is from Hermosa Beach. Hermosa Beach is where all the rich divorced dads hang out. What's your go-to bar in Hermosa Beach?

Oh, depends on the vibe. But Tower 12 is the best for meeting the rich dads who will buy you drinks all night. Right. Like you've got the polarity of it, the virus. Right. So like you're like and people that are from here know that about that bar. Yes. And so like, yes.

You can start to like really play that game. Oh my gosh. And so those, those these podcasts ones. I've really gotten pretty dialed in. You can now target customers based on what they are actively looking to buy right now. We use Signal to load that customer data into our ad account every day. Right. And so, like, that's an ad.

Dude, it looks so real. They're pretty legit. I don't know what it is, but like it looks real, but you can also still tell it's fake. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I can't even point to something about it that looks fake. Right. And part of it is, again, the context of like we know.

And so this is the same prompt just with a different character and a different script. Black men's skin and hair are different and golden grooming is the only brand built specifically for us. They actually know what melanin needs. Right. Oh, I love that. Like for an out of frame speaker. Of the other, yes. Ah.

These ones are fun. You just change the character. Yeah. It's an obvious choice for Facebook advertisers. Like, do you want a list of everyone that is currently looking to buy your product? Yeah, I do. You can see the subtitle here. Yeah.

But what I love about this one is in the background, you've got a half-drink water bottle, a little crumbled. You've got a bed that's kind of unmade with like cables and wires. Like everything in the background is so realistic. Pretty specific. Are you using chat GPT to build these prompts? Yeah, at times here. Something that I was using a lot was like, I want to create a prompt for Google V03. video creation that shows an alien getting interviewed in a street style interview.

The interviewer isn't on camera, but you see the mic in the frame, right? Like super. Okay. Here's just the concept. They don't do a great job out of the box. It'll be a lot of like, it'll give it options sometimes where it'll be like, he could be wearing a black hoodie or blue hoodie. And it's like, no, no, no, like you got to go in and like trim the fat.

We can just try it like out of the box. but you can start to pick up the details and then adjust it from there, right? So it's like, look at how it described the alien. Cool, not mad at that. But it'll say it's wearing casual earth style clothing like a hoodie jeans and sneakers. When like when you give that to Google V-O3, you just want to be like, he's wearing a black hoodie jeans and sneakers. Right. And so like they get a little bit more, the more than you need to give.

Yeah. Yeah. Google, right? And then it's like, this is me playing with it with the alien one, right? Where it's like, all right, give me a better description for this guy, just to see what needs to happen. And then I say, I want to write a script for the alien to say that it's a satirical political perspective on the United States from someone who isn't from this world. And you can see it, right? Like, your leaders are chosen through a popularity contest that's decided by people who think the moon landing was fake, but professional wrestling is, right? Like, and, you know, and, you know,

it's not perfect, but like just like trying to get into like these like one liners, right? Like you banned books but not bullets. Can you create this kind of comedy like concept? I can't stop thinking of how many business ideas people could start just with V-O-3. Oh, it's insane. Let's just niche down way, way, way, way down here. Let's say you want to have an advertising agency for restaurants in New York City. Do you have any restaurants there are in New York City?

40,000. 40,000 restaurants. So let's say you do this. You one prompt, you make the same video you did someone in Times Square or someone, somewhere recognizable in New York City. And it's like, hey, what's the best pasta in New York? I don't know. Like, I really like Olive Garden for the vibe or whatever.

It's just some on street talking. And then as that ad plays, you just put the persistent text above it that says, like, I can make this this ad for your business. And then you only show that ad to restaurant owners in New York City. And so other restaurant owners are seeing some fake restaurant ad that looks very real. They may know it's AI. They may not. It doesn't matter. You charge them 500 bucks a month to run those same V-O-3 generated ads. Like if anyone thought up until two days ago that like social media platforms weren't going to embrace AI-generated videos. Like, that's no longer up for debate.

Google just announced, we are putting a seamless integration for V-O-3 into Google, into YouTube shorts. Like, it's done. They're embracing it. And why wouldn't they? This video of an otter in a sink got a billion views. Just an otter taking a bath in a sink.

These videos are cats jumping off high dives into the pool. So good. Got like 700 million views. So good. Why wouldn't YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, want that on their platform. Why wouldn't they? No, they do.

They keep some people on. Yeah, they want the highest engaging content and those videos do the job. What other businesses could be built on top of video generation? A lot of the stuff from an advertising perspective is like where there's immediate content need, right? And so like, we do that with home service businesses where we'll generate video reviews for, you know, a garage door installation business in Cleveland. It'll be like, dude, company A, like name A couldn't recommend them enough in the Cleveland area if you need a garage door, right? And so it's giving us ad creatives like that, which is very similar to what you were saying on the restaurant

side, right? Like, how do you use this to create short form videos that promote specific things? The other piece of it, similarly is there's a very interesting world of media companies. When you think about short form video content. I'd say like Vine, right? Because Vine was six second videos and a bunch of these like what all say are like comedians, but like funny people have like built a career on the back of that distribution channel and that content style. I mean, wasn't like the Paul brothers were Vine first, David Dobrick, right? Like these guys that became these massive media companies or media personalities started with short form six second videos because it's much easier to be really good for only six seconds than for 60 minutes or for 60 seconds 100 percent and so I think that there's

people that have all going to define as taste like market taste they know what's funny the interviews of Moses parting the red sea right like that is culturally relevant good content that relates to a lot of people people find it entertaining and funny and the barrier of entry of creating that stuff is much lower now, where you can go and do that and they've skyrocketed to 100,000 plus followers in what looks, I mean, Google V-O-3 has not been out for that long. So, like, I'm assuming they've gone from zero to 100K in a month, six weeks, right? Like, that's a media company.

Similar to the one that we talked about the last time I was on the episode, which was the guys that made the videos of like saving the tiger from under the tree. right where it's like that's a media business i think there's a world where you could go the jesus videos the the ones that are the interviews like that is a awesome parlay into building distribution for some christian related product you could definitely sell gen z bibles you could definitely sell merch you could definitely sell whatever that is and i think that'll be the piece that people struggle with more of like you can go build phenomenal content but like the monetization on the back of that is just a little bit different.

You have to figure that out. But like from a lift perspective, I think if you just understand videos that like can go viral and like you can now go create those a lot faster. And I think that that piece of it's interesting to me. Figuring out the monetization on the back, who knows? Just like Jake and Logan Paul, like they were big on Vine. No one took them seriously.

I didn't even know who they were until a couple years ago. Six second videos, big deal, flash in the pan. now they're massive. A corollary to that could be, what was it? It was like Jordan and Friends or something, that random Facebook account that has all those AI generated videos of babies getting almost eaten by tigers or whatever. Like, it's probably some guy in Pakistan, right? And he's just prompting and he's prompting and he's taking the money that Facebook gives him and he's pouring it into VO3 credits or whatever. Even he probably doesn't look at this as something scalable. He probably is thinking like, you know, this is going to get shut down eventually. or whatever. This is just my growth hack of the month or year. But the skills that he's developing in prompting, he could parley into anything, into a feature-length film, into a 90-minute movie. This is not going to be an eight-second cap for very long. They're going to be able to do more. They're going to figure out character continuity. They're going to figure out product placements. And the people that are sitting there being like, I'm not going to start doing this until the AI is good enough.

are going to be behind on the learning curve when it gets good enough because there's somebody like me that's sitting here fighting through the issues with it but now the moment that it's better i already know what to do like i know the prompts i know what to play with i know how to go and actually turn those into what we need and so it's like go do even if you don't think that some niche account of like alien interviewing Americans is going to make you a millionaire. The skills that you learn for the moment that V-O-3 can go and do something more, you're ahead of the curve. Yeah.

And that's the piece people skip. You think that Sean Evans, he's the hot ones guy on YouTube? Yeah. Do you think that he ever thought that interviewing people while eating hot wings would turn into a hundred million dollar business? No, it was just a gimmick, right? It's just fun. We're having fun.

sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yep. Well, it's pretty good, man. Dude, what, us doing a double episode again? Holy mackerel, dude. Who would have thought? Well, where can we find you, Sam? On Twitter at I'm Sam Thompson.

You know, you have your own playlist on YouTube now, right? You've got your own TKO playlist. Yeah, dude. No way, dude. And we're starting to link to the other Sam episodes in the playlist now. Hell yeah, dude. Dude, I'm always hanging out, dude. All right, let me know if I should have Sam.

on again, honestly, whether you say yes or no, I'm going to have him on again because he's a friend and he's doing really cool things. Thanks for hanging out on the Kerner office.