René Remsik / Content Creator. Educator. SAAS Builder

Rene Remsik did not set out to become one of the most-viewed AI content creators on the internet. 

He set out to survive. 

From Forex trading at 15 to writing poetry books, founding a finance startup, and eventually being laid off just as AI exploded onto the scene, Rene's path is anything but conventional. 

In this episode of the Headsmack Podcast, Paul Povolni sits down with Rene to unpack how a creator from Slovakia grew to 2.3 million followers across seven social media platforms and now generates 30 to 50 million views every month. 

Rene shares the exact concept of growth content that changed his trajectory, his multi-platform monetization stack from brand deals to digital products to software development, and why recycling content is a smarter strategy than most people realize. 

He also gets candid about the real costs of agentic AI tools like OpenClaw, the current limits of vibe coding, and why getting into the right circles was the single decision that moved him from survival mode to building a team. 

If you are serious about building an audience and turning that audience into sustainable income in the age of AI, this episode is your blueprint.

GUEST BIO: 

Rene Remsik is a Slovakia-born AI content creator, educator, and builder whose journey spans Forex trading at 15, three published poetry books, a stint in multi-level marketing, and years of blogging before AI completely transformed his trajectory. Based in Bratislava, he began posting AI content under the brand AI Trendz in 2022 and rapidly scaled to 2.3 million followers across seven social media platforms, generating 30 to 50 million views per month. He has built a team, launched multiple software products including the viral content tool ViralSky and the thumbnail generator SkySnail, and created the AI Trendz Academy to teach others the exact systems behind his growth. Rene monetizes across brand partnerships, affiliate marketing, digital products, newsletters, and proprietary software, making him one of the most diversified independent creators in the AI content space. He is active across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Threads, X, and LinkedIn.

LINKS:

Skysnail: https://skysnail.io/?affiliate=OD8W9IW3

Viral Sky: https://www.viralsky.ai/

Paul Povolni (Voppa) is the founder of Voppa Creative and a creative leader with over 30 years of experience in brand strategy and design. Based in Jackson, Mississippi, he has worked with clients internationally, leading teams in award-winning branding while serving as a coach and speaker. Paul delivers workshops and keynotes on brand strategy, creative thinking, and organizational culture, and hosts The Headsmack Podcast: Conversations with Misfits. His work centers on helping organizations lead with Clarity, Creativity, and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Voppa Creative Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (09:53.334)
Hey, welcome to the Head Smacked podcast. My name is Paul Pavolny and I am excited to have another misfit with me. I have Rene Remschick and he is a content creator, educator and builder with AI personal brand and faceless pages that have 2.3 million followers and get 30 to 50 million monthly views. How you doing Rene?

René (10:18.136)
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm doing awesome.

Paul Povolni (10:21.39)
All right. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Rene is from the area that I originally came from. My roots are from Slovakia and he has done some amazing things online. And so it's great to connect with kind of a fellow countryman, I guess.

René (10:38.252)
Yeah, and for the fellow Europeans that are listening, I would say Ahoy.

Paul Povolni (10:42.958)
All right, man. Well, the, the, the bio and what I read in there, the 2.3 million followers and 30 to 50 million monthly views. I definitely want to talk a little bit about that. but before we get started, what I like to do is I like to kind of start a little bit with your origin story. I hear a little bit more about you as you can see on my wall. like superheroes. I like origin stories. And so tell me a little bit about Renee. Tell me how you can go as far back as you want, how you got started.

where you started from and where you're at now.

René (11:16.682)
Okay, me too, actually, by the way, I grew up, you know, as many men boys watching the superheroes. So I'm on your side with that. And yeah, regarding my journey, it's been wild past few years, because let me tell you, I've been trying to do something special, like, you know, achieve success in work, not like in general health or whatever, but like specifically

you know, work, business, ever since I was like 14, 15 years old and only the past year or two, I can say I finally did it because I've been just trying, you know, I started at, I started actually Forex trading when I was 15 and I've been doing that. Yeah. I've been doing that for many years thinking I'm just going to be the best trader in the world, but yeah, markets have a way.

Paul Povolni (12:04.914)
wow.

René (12:14.222)
to humble you at any time. So after I learned I'm not gonna be a trader, know, trading with a leverage of one to 100 or even one to 500. I just, yeah, I just stick to investing in crypto and stocks, which works. And later on I tried even multi-level marketing, you know, that also failed really bad.

Paul Povolni (12:27.075)
Yeah, yeah.

René (12:43.438)
I tried building an app with my friends. We were like 17. We had a great like idea for a finance app, which there are tons of them right now at back then, you know, it, it wasn't saturated like today. So it was a great timing, but none of us could, you know, write code. So we were screwed basically. And that didn't move anywhere. And then came time, you know, graduating from,

Paul Povolni (13:03.99)
Right, right.

René (13:12.696)
high school, go to college. So I try building websites. I build in WordPress. I tried building like a marketplace for buying and selling Facebook pages and all kinds of, you know, crazy ideas, but nothing really worked out. And I was at the time I was still trading. I found crypto when I was like 19, I think. So

Paul Povolni (13:30.061)
Yeah, yeah.

René (13:42.39)
almost like 10 years ago. So I was also doing content back then, but it was like simple posts. think one of my first attempts at content where when I basically started Forex trading at like 16, I had, I think I still have that Facebook page. It's called the trading with RERA. It's like a shortcut from my full name, you know, and that's how I started making content, simple posts.

And that's been going on for many, many years. Then, you know, I was doing, uh, I was also a financial advisor because of my passion for finance at like 21, 22 years old, uh, been doing a copywriter blogger for, for a few years as well. So there, I also gained some experience from that, you know, which led me to here, uh, actually, and I had some.

Paul Povolni (14:36.237)
Yeah.

René (14:41.536)
I was also very passionate about art, always. It's a kind of a weird combination of finance and art, but I was doing both.

Paul Povolni (14:49.59)
Yeah, yeah, very two different sides of the brain. Yeah.

René (14:53.388)
Yeah. So I wrote actually, I had a few years when I was just writing books. wrote and published three poetry books. I was in the band. We recorded some songs, even put it online. We still have many songs and I still play, but just for fun, not for a career anymore. I did paintings, know, actual paintings I still have. you know, so it was always a lot of fields that I was in. was

Paul Povolni (15:10.434)
Yeah. Yeah.

René (15:23.118)
trying to do finance, art, content creation, basically marketing. So there wasn't really a focus. So, you know, trying too many things. And yeah, then I was employed in some companies when I was like in early twenties. And when AI came, that was probably the last time when I was employed because I started using ChadGBT as a blogger, you know.

Paul Povolni (15:31.48)
Yeah, yeah.

Right.

René (15:52.984)
So suddenly I was working instead of eight hours, I was working four hours and using my free time to do kind of side projects and all kinds of hustles. that was, that it was a financial startup called Investor and they were just trying to become this next, I don't know, finance Yahoo or whatever website.

Paul Povolni (15:53.186)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:04.823)
Yeah. Now what were you blogging at that time?

René (16:21.774)
for financial, all kinds of like trading, investing, SEO articles, news. So, but that failed because they didn't want to focus on revenue at all from the beginning. So it went bankrupt a few months after ChageBT came out. But luckily, luckily I started making videos a few months before that ended because I was telling them like we need to start making content more.

Paul Povolni (16:39.661)
Wow.

René (16:51.374)
not just post on Twitter, know, but actual reels. Reels were the way to go in 2022, 2023, still today. They didn't want to. So I just started my own page called AI Trends with a Z, you know, .xyz. And that's how my personal brand basically started. I grew from zero to maybe 10K or 20K followers on Instagram.

Paul Povolni (17:09.358)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (17:21.518)
Wow.

René (17:21.812)
in like a month or two and yeah then I was laid off and then I was just reliant on making it on my own ever since then.

Paul Povolni (17:31.341)
Wow. Wow. And so when you launched that on your own with that website, is that what your primary way to generate traffic, but what was your way to make income?

René (17:45.775)
Yeah, that was initially the main goal, the AI directory, because I knew this is like a great thing to have. And I was right. Now we have thousands of these AI directories. I just didn't have the SEO skill at that time to grow it like really good. Most of my traffic really came from social media and it still is like today.

Paul Povolni (17:59.01)
Right.

Paul Povolni (18:11.588)
Yeah.

René (18:12.085)
I still have the directory. I still improve it from time to time, but it's not like the main source of income in the main business. So I just focused more on growing the personal brand. So, you know, in the first year it was survival mode. try looking for ways like what works, what doesn't. The second year was finally like freelance mode, I would say. I could make an income.

Paul Povolni (18:31.63)
Yeah, yeah.

René (18:41.279)
I could make a living, but I was doing everything, editing, designing. It's been crazy. And for the past year, I've been finally like lucky to, you know, grow the income so nicely that I could hire several people. And now we have four people in the team and I'm hiring fifth one from March. So I have a person for all kinds of tasks, you know, and they just...

Paul Povolni (18:48.791)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:05.763)
Well...

René (19:11.287)
They're super helpful, so I'm grateful to finally have a team.

Paul Povolni (19:14.287)
So what was the pivot that you made that finally got it to be profitable? What was the moment that changed everything for you?

René (19:25.143)
Hmm. Honestly, it's hard to say because it was just this continuous growth. when I got to 30,000 followers, I could make like one K two K euros per month from brand deals and stuff, but I didn't know how to do affiliate marketing, you know, digital products properly at the time. So I was very reliant on that, but

When I did coaching with Clark Gary, not sure who knows him, but he helped me. did like one month of coaching and I started networking with other creators at that time very often. And I think that was one of the things that really, really pushed me to another level. And I just improved my content. I increased my rates.

And for the first time I was able to make like maybe six thousand dollars in a month at only like sixty thousand followers. So that was kind of, you know, nice and.

Paul Povolni (20:34.134)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:38.415)
So with those people that you networked with, did they share with you or what did they change about the way you were doing things? What did they give you that made the difference?

René (20:51.809)
Well, before I was just trying to make videos and somehow make it. So it was this wild card, you know, trying to get lucky. But then I started looking at it more strategically. Like, for example, I started using DM and comment automation on Instagram to collect leads, you know, to just send links to people to get more sales.

So that was like one thing. The other was really focused on the little things like the hook and make sure the video is good and like raise your rates. At first I was charging like 100 or 150 euros per reel for sponsor veals. Then I was like, okay, I can increase that. So I went to 250, then 500, 1000, et cetera.

Paul Povolni (21:40.793)
Yeah.

René (21:52.021)
Getting yourself in the right circles is definitely one of the biggest game changers.

Paul Povolni (21:57.615)
Yeah. Now with the reels that you were creating, how were they generating income? You mentioned brand partnerships. Explain that to somebody that might not know what that means.

René (22:07.767)
Yeah, like classical influencer because when you have a following is promote a brand and they pay you for it. And I try to do it in a very natural way. And so it's a fit, you know, I'm not going to promote some gambling websites or skincare products because it's not fit at all. So when it's an AI tool that I could even use myself, that's like the best fit. love when brands

that I actually like and use reach out to me. pay me to promote them and they're actually user. So that's the main thing for me.

Paul Povolni (22:44.515)
Yeah. Yeah. So it's, so it's very different from say affiliate marketing where you get paid by people that actually buy a product. That's where your pay comes from. The brand partnership is you get paid simply by mentioning their service, right? Is that the difference?

René (23:04.703)
Exactly. Yeah. And I think it's where most creators and influencers start. And once they kind of understand the whole ecosystem, they start generating income from several. So, and it's the same for me. Like I started with brand deals, then I, you know, improved, increased, sorry, my income with affiliate marketing. Then I also started doing digital products and now I'm investing also in

Paul Povolni (23:05.838)
Okay.

René (23:34.615)
getting income from softwares. We started building our own softwares and it's still an investment, but I believe it's also gonna be part of the future income because we build like free already and we're working on the fourth one right now.

Paul Povolni (23:42.637)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:48.536)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:54.061)
Well, and I definitely want to get into that because creating software now has gotten so much easier than it was when you first tried creating your finance software years ago. But, for the person that might be listening to this, that is in a similar journey, you know, you've got your viewers and followers are pretty high. What do you attribute to getting that many followers? Cause there's people that are creating content. trying to get, you know,

René (24:03.33)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:18.945)
more followers, more people interested in them. What, what was, do you feel it was a secret ingredient to get you to that many followers?

René (24:27.649)
You know, it's a lot of things, but mainly, mainly it's growth content. When you understand what growth content, you can never go back. It's just the type of content that's kind of general and a lot of people that will watch it, it will enjoy it. Because when you start a video with a specific focused hook, like on realtors on how to get

you know, better deals or whatever, it will never get enough views. It will always be like few hundred views, maybe a few thousand. But when you focus on growth content and the hook is kind of a general in the video itself too, a lot of potential followers are lying there, you know? So the most viral video for me was definitely comparing tools where I'm like in the video twice.

It's like a cloning effect and I would just compare tools 2024 versus 2025 and that got like 30 million views across all platforms. Yeah, it brought me like maybe like 100,000 followers, maybe even more. And there are several videos like that and that's just growth content. It doesn't work always, but you know, you just keep pushing and trying and...

Paul Povolni (25:35.565)
Wow, wow.

Paul Povolni (25:41.667)
Wow. Yeah.

René (25:56.206)
And then that's just video. You know, I also do that on Facebook and other platforms.

Paul Povolni (25:56.431)
So when you talk about, so when you talk about, okay. Yeah. So when you talk about growth content, what does growth content mean? Is it insightful? Is it informational? Like what is growth content? How do you define that?

René (26:14.027)
Yeah, it's kind of hard to define, I would say it's a mix of several things, but it could be definitely the tool comparisons. A lot of people know this style. So you do like now we're, we were doing 2025 versus 2026, or it could be paid versus free. So you're comparing these kinds of tools or you simply find content that's just gone super viral and

you recreate it so you possibly can go also go viral or you just, you know, when you find the content that works for you specifically, that could also be growth content. Just doubling down on what works. That's the simplest strategy.

Paul Povolni (26:59.823)
Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. so, and so AI was probably the biggest thing that triggered that phenomenal growth. so, you know, AI has morphed, um, quite a bit in, in the last few years, it seems like it's been around for a lot longer than it has. And the, the amazing growth that we've seen from, was it the end of 2023 that it first became publicly accessible? think Chachi BT was the end of 2023. Is that right?

René (27:26.517)
Late 2022.

Paul Povolni (27:28.431)
Yeah. Okay. So lately 2022 and suddenly, you know, it's just everywhere and everybody's talking about it. Everybody's using it. So what do you see as the biggest difference? You mentioned that you're probably creating a video on 2025 to 2026. What do you see as the biggest changes that have happened since last year?

René (27:48.034)
man. Well, the first angle would probably be the quality. Like the tools just really got good. I'm sure everyone saw that in image video, music, sounds, like text, everything just got on really, really good. If we even look at the Will Smith eating spaghetti benchmark. Now the latest videos are just.

Paul Povolni (27:57.689)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:13.999)
Right, right.

René (28:17.683)
super realistic and we got Cdance 2.0 coming out. we've reached the point where every like all the content from these new models just look real, sound real and it's just so good. So that's probably the biggest difference and that's just three years, right? It's crazy. Just thinking about it. From...

Paul Povolni (28:38.711)
Right. Right. Yeah.

René (28:45.069)
I would say like from the content comparison, the saturation is also insane. Now there, it feels like every fourth or fifth person influencer is doing content about AI. You know, when I started, it was just maybe a couple of thousand people making videos. Now it's literally anybody. And the algorithm is made in a way that it pushes out new accounts.

Paul Povolni (29:01.828)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:09.901)
Right.

René (29:15.603)
often and doesn't really care about the following anymore. So it makes it even more challenging for people like, you know, me that have the personal brand have the following. But there's just always challenges because you're challenged by new competitors that, you know, find found new tricks that make it work better. And yeah, then we have less views, etc. But

Yeah, that would be probably the biggest difference. the saturation, there's too much of everything right now. So standing out is just honestly hard.

Paul Povolni (29:52.527)
A lot harder. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you, what kind of things are you kind of strategically looking at doing to stand out? Cause you know, you have 2.3 million followers. You get, you know, 30 to 50 million views a month. That's still pretty impressive, but you know, like you said, the algorithms, you'd think that'd be your friend, but you know, the algorithms fight against people that kind of brought them to where they're at. You know, like you said, they, they're pushing out new accounts.

ahead of, you know, bigger accounts, which is kind of, it's almost seems unfair because you've worked so hard to get the followers. You've worked so hard to generate content. You've, you've been putting out content, you've, you're, learning how to do content. You're doing all this stuff. And then suddenly somebody that just started an account gets more activity and gets pushed out there. So strategically, what are you, what are you looking at doing to get yourself noticed a little more?

René (30:52.045)
Hmm, okay. So there are several things I would point out. Probably the first main advantage I have compared to the new creators that are blowing up is I have experience and team. So they have to do probably everything on their own. So it's only a matter of time, you know, until they burn out or whatever. And because I have a team, I have consistency. I am not afraid that I won't have

Paul Povolni (31:14.914)
Yeah.

René (31:21.609)
something to post. have content to post on all my accounts, all social media, almost every single day. So volume is the main advantage, like having the team that can help you bring the volume. Volume is key in content. Come again.

Paul Povolni (31:39.373)
And consistently, right?

And consistently you're able to generate it consistently, whereas a solo person, they've got to balance it with maybe their full-time job or maybe that, you know, something else that they're doing. and so that that's the difference too. Yeah.

René (31:51.968)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that would be main thing because right now, like I have a designer for corrals and all kinds of design. I have a copywriter. like she's preparing my posts, threads, newsletter, and I'm I have editor for video. So I have like only the quality control overlook and they just helped me prepare everything that I want.

So that's the big advantage. know, I, it would be hard to go bankrupt in the, in the stage where I'm at, like fingers crossed. I'm hoping it's not going to happen, but I'm having the best month right now in my career, revenue wise, also kind of views wise, I would say. But, two things I would tell other people, like what works for me.

I already mentioned it, when you find something that works, double down on it. So if you find the video format that worked, try to recreate it in several different ways and post it and post it on several platforms, not just on one, never just on one. You are potentially losing views. And what also works is just posting the same thing over and over again, because, yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:10.457)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:18.221)
Really?

René (33:20.555)
When you post something and it went viral, it doesn't mean everyone saw it, you know? So when you post it again, it will show to new people. Some people that saw it maybe like just scroll by, but it will still show to new people and they will engage. So I did do that on, you know, we just recycle some content and it's not just showing to new people. It's also that people forget, you know?

So if you post something valuable that you've posted four months ago and you post it again, they maybe will remember like, I think I saw it, but I forgot to use this. And they will just save it again. Comment, like whatever. So even just reposting the same thing, doesn't matter if it's funny or educational or informational. If it worked one time, it's most likely to work again.

Paul Povolni (33:48.237)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (34:16.675)
That's really good. so the social media doesn't dox you or they don't flag you as repeating the same content. Do you slightly change it or is it the exact same word for word, pixel for pixel?

René (34:31.435)
I mean, it depends from platform to platform, but what I was saying definitely applies to threads by Meta and it applies to Facebook. There it worked for me. And I'm sure it's also, yeah, also Instagram. Cause I remember I posted one like image of, I think it was like 50 best AI tools.

I posted it like three times and once it had 2 million views, then it had 1 million views and third time it had maybe half a million views. Same thing, posted like one month and second month and third month. So there are some breaks between the content as well. So I don't know on which platforms this doesn't work, but I think it works on most because the social media platforms really look at only engagement.

Paul Povolni (35:09.56)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:20.335)
Yeah.

René (35:30.333)
And so if it's engaging, they will just push it. And yeah, just make sure it's not some spamming content that they could block.

Paul Povolni (35:34.372)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:40.277)
Right. Right. Well, one of the things that I've noticed too is, especially on Facebook is that if you go to your details about a particular post, you see how many people actually it was pushed out to. And I've got, you know, not, not near as close followers as you do, but when I look at comparing how many followers I have and how many followers actually saw the post that I posted,

You know, we, think we're under the illusion that if I post it, everybody sees it all, you know, 6,000 people that are following me, see this post every time I post something, everybody's seeing it and none of those 6,000 people are liking my post. What in the world? Well, if you look at the data, you actually see that Facebook has not showed it to that many people out of everybody that's following you. And so even if you do post it again, as Renee was saying that Facebook, the second time might show it to a very different audience.

or, one of the things that I've noticed, it's kind of funny because I've seen it happen several times is somebody would post something, controversial, some, know, that might post that most might've posted something about the Superbowl and, they didn't specifically reference the Superbowl. They just kind of made this controversial comment and it shows up on somebody's page five days later.

But they don't have the context of this was written about the Superbowl. This was written about this particular thing that was happening on that particular day. And so they respond to it thinking that it's referencing something that was happening more recently. And so, so one of the things to keep in mind is, you know, Facebook especially will recycle your content and show it later than you actually post it sometimes. And so, you know, you can't get a really actual.

read for like I posted this yesterday and only got X amount of likes, realize that Facebook is going to probably recycle that post itself for the next week. And it's going to show up on people's feeds a week later. And so I think even keeping in mind what kind of content you post and how relevant it is that it's not going to be seen immediately. Am I getting that right or am I totally off?

René (37:51.564)
Yeah, like it always depends on the type of content, but if something goes viral, can it can just go and go for several months. Some content dies in like five hours. You know, I have I have posts that have 20 likes sometimes, even with almost 300K followers on Facebook. Sometimes we're just wrong and it fails. But sometimes some the videos can be going, you know,

Paul Povolni (38:04.835)
haha

René (38:20.329)
I have actually one video on Instagram that I posted in July 2025. And until this day, it's getting comments. You know, half a year later, it's people still comment to get the link I mentioned in the video. So, yeah, the more viral, the more the longer the show goes on.

Paul Povolni (38:30.349)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (38:37.785)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (38:43.949)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I've even seen some people and maybe it's, it's a glitch that worked previously and doesn't work anymore, but I've seen some people that have gone back on previous posts and commented on it just for it to get re put back into the, algorithm, just so the algorithm reflags it of, this is still an active post, you know, three months later or whatever. I don't know whether that's still happening, but I've, I've seen some people do that.

But they've just said, well, I'm just commenting on this post just to get it back into the, into the flow of people's pages.

René (39:19.201)
Hmm, that's hard to say. Honestly, I don't know if it, if it would be that easy. I think everybody could do it. You know, it, it seems like it's, there's certain strategies regarding social media that people kind of make up and they're not, you know, they're not verified. It's hard to verify this one specifically. And I would be skeptical about it. Like,

Paul Povolni (39:24.879)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:40.898)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (39:44.451)
Yeah.

René (39:47.414)
They have their own algorithm how it works and all we can do is just post and see what works and what doesn't and play with the data. yeah, that's a wild card.

Paul Povolni (39:59.695)
Yeah. Yeah. So, so you've mentioned threads. What are some other, like, I don't even think about threads and maybe I need to think about a little more because I pretty much ignore it, you know, um, cause it was kind of a Facebook's, uh, you know, something against Twitter, know, something to fight Croc, um, and so, fight, um, X and so what, what social networks do you feel are working and what are the ones that you're getting the most, uh, return on?

René (40:07.597)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (40:28.281)
for posting content there.

René (40:31.873)
Good question. And it's hard to figure out for people in the beginning, but honestly, it first like you have to think about like what you're trying to do. Are you a personal brand or a business? If you're a business, the best place to be is probably X and LinkedIn. And if you're just have a brand like personal brand, then the other social media like threats.

Facebook, TikTok, et cetera. But of course, me as a person that runs a personal brand, I am everywhere. I'm on several social media platforms. So when I do reels, I post them on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. And when I do threads, they get posted on X, threads, and Facebook. So I always...

Paul Povolni (41:13.816)
Yeah.

René (41:31.317)
like 90 % of my content always goes to at least two to three platforms. Sometimes like I post something that goes only on one platform, but mostly I always repurpose and that, you know, helps with the volume, which I was still talking like earlier, which is very important. So if you're posting something on Facebook, you can post the same thing on threads usually. So why not? You know,

Paul Povolni (41:48.109)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (41:59.746)
Right, right. Now, are you using a tool to do all this posting or are you doing it manually or somebody on your team is doing it manually?

René (42:01.622)
And

René (42:05.323)
Yeah, it's a combination of many tools, but I have my tech sack, but I forgot to mention what you asked. So for me, probably like the platforms that have the biggest return on investment for me is Instagram, number one. And recently it's been Facebook because it really helps for brands to show them, you know, I have not just 300K on Instagram, but also on Facebook.

And yeah, regarding the tool stack. So I know there's millions of tools right now. You can, you can do anything and any tool has 100 alternatives. So I highly recommend you to just pick a few that will be like your main tech stack, depending, you know, on your goals and where you want to post and what you want to post. For me, for example, I do a lot of written content.

Paul Povolni (42:42.083)
Yeah, yeah.

René (43:04.277)
So for that, use Claude and I have trained projects there. I use it even to reply to brands. I train the project and how I want to reply even with links and I don't even have to prompt it. You know, I just copy paste the message there and gives me the reply and you know, I send it to them. This is how I save time. And I have projects for script writing, social media captions.

and even advisors for my software companies to ask them about anything regarding lending page, help me write emails. I just always feed it with enough data so it knows what I want instead of just classic opening chat in ChaiGBT or GLOD.

Paul Povolni (43:52.6)
Right, right.

René (43:54.296)
So Cloud is like the most important tool probably or Gemini. A lot of people were switching from Chad GPT recently to Cloud or Gemini and that's for a good reason. I also use a writing tool, Viral Sky that I created myself and I also use it for story posts and threads. It's been working really well. Like I'm getting millions of views.

on these posts and now I started using it for my other faceless page. So I was at first testing it on my personal brand first. Now I'm using it for another account as well. You just enter a topic, click create in 10 seconds, check if it looks good and post it. Easy as that. Then I have content generation tools. So you should have at least...

one platform with all the image and video models that are new and the best. This is how you will differentiate yourself if you're not using the free models, but like the top notch, you know, models. And that could be Hicksfield, FreePic, Hilo AI, or Imagine Art. They all have the best models for video generation like Google V03, Sora 2, or image models.

you know, banana or GBT from, from to GBT. So definitely have something for writing then for the content generation videos and images. And, then I also automate, of course, my DMS. That's a lot of people probably know this, you know, you can let people say comments, banana, and I'll send you the link.

Paul Povolni (45:19.747)
Yeah.

René (45:43.982)
You set up the automation in many chats, for example, but I switched to BooSend because it's much cheaper and I have three Instagram accounts on the wrong profile. there's no like, like many chats charge me because I went too viral. So they charged me like $250 in one month. You know, it's based on the number of messages and in the boost and it's fixed monthly subscription.

Paul Povolni (45:44.206)
Right.

Paul Povolni (46:05.39)
Wow.

René (46:13.293)
So if anyone is using like this kind of a tool, totally recommend the BooSend or other alternative with fixed like rates per month.

Paul Povolni (46:20.995)
That's BooSend, B-O-O Send, or am I misunderstanding that? Okay.

René (46:24.065)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Shout out to Marco. know that founder, by the way. So it's, they are really good. hopefully they're going to kill many chat because yeah, they've been expensive and well, yeah. Other tools I would say is also you need to have some kind of a link in bio, right? With all your social media profiles, contact possibly, you know, media, get your offers.

Paul Povolni (46:32.559)
Yeah.

you

Paul Povolni (46:40.632)
Yeah.

René (46:53.229)
anything like that. I use beacons for that for right now. That's Lincoln bio and digital store, but I can also use that in beehive where I have newsletter. So maybe I'll switch later. We'll see. And these are like the basic tools I think everybody should have when they want to like, you know, create content in 2026 and further there. And then there are

Paul Povolni (47:10.265)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:16.621)
Right, right. So in posting to the different platforms, instead of doing it manually, you have a post and you want to send it to Facebook and threads and Instagram and TikTok and X and all of that. Do you have a tool that you use to send to all those channels or do you have to do it manually because they're very different content? Like, what do you recommend for something like that?

René (47:39.394)
Honestly, we mostly post manually because in these tools, these scheduling tools, it's mostly for posts. So when I try to post a thread simultaneously on X and threads by meta, it will just fail most of the time and it doesn't post on threads or it posts wrong. It posts the thread as separate posts so that I have to delete it.

So it's pain in the ass, honestly. So we just, you know, manually, uh, if I didn't have team, I would just do it and do it, but thankfully I have, so they just do it. And I'm right now I'm exploring a new option that would be helpful for that. And the recording videos I could, yeah, schedule it too. But usually I, you know, invite other accounts for a call hop on Instagram. It's usually my accounts or friends accounts.

Paul Povolni (48:10.51)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:16.047)
You

Paul Povolni (48:34.319)
Mm.

René (48:38.009)
or clients and that feature wasn't available in the scheduling tool as well. So that also brings me back to, you know, posting manually. But this will be a priority for this year. Yeah, because it's taking a lot of time to be, you know, posting everywhere. You have to set up the automation on Instagram as well. So yeah, that's where I'm right now, but hopefully I will find a tool that works well in this area.

Paul Povolni (48:53.699)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (49:05.823)
Yeah, now when you mentioned something, and I want to circle back to it, is you mentioned posting threads on X. So explain to somebody that might, I think I know what that means, but explain to somebody that might not be familiar with that term what that actually means.

René (49:20.309)
Okay, so I mean, nowadays articles are also getting popular on X and creators are even getting paid for it if you get enough views. But if you want to post it in a different style, which is a thread, it's basically a short post, which is a hook itself. And then all the content is kind of a hidden in the post. So when you open it,

It shows the thread, all the mini posts in that thread basically. Did I get that correctly? Yeah, it's basically like comments. Yeah. And you can do threads on Facebook too. Not many people notice. It's not officially threads, but it's still like you do the hook. You can add an image and then you create the thread by adding the comments. So I think this format on Facebook is...

Paul Povolni (49:54.253)
You mean the comments you post you post in the comments? Yeah. Okay.

René (50:18.475)
like working really well and it got me to 300k along with my viral reels.

Paul Povolni (50:24.291)
Wow. Now with all that attention and you've kind of mentioned this and I want to make sure that we make it clear to somebody that wants to look at, okay, all right, I want to get attention. I've got attention. How do I turn that attention into income? And so you had mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned affiliates, you mentioned brand partnerships. Is that where the income comes from the attention or are you now doing other things that generate income from the attention?

René (50:51.127)
That's a perfect question, honestly, because a lot of creators don't understand how to monetize and it's very important so you can stay in the game. If you look at the biggest creators in the world, like what are they doing? MrBeast, he's making money from YouTube monetization. Then he was doing also brand partnerships. He's still doing that. And then he launched his own brands. So...

This is definitely a way to go. It also depends like what kind of creator or influencer you are, right? But if you're a business already, like a restaurant or, you know, a cleaning business, it's, it's the simplest thing. You just need to get views and you will get leads. But for creators, we have to build out the personal brand with get followers and build out our offers, you know, in the process. So.

Paul Povolni (51:39.79)
Right.

René (51:51.18)
I would say, like if you have expertise in something specific, you can create your offer first, like coaching or digital product, and then start making content and just try to get it to people. But if you don't really, and you're kind of figuring it out, just start making content in a niche that's interesting for you, and you will build out the offers along the way.

This is how I mentioned, like I started with brand deals, you know, my first video was promotion for a brand for like 50 euros. It's, you know, coffee money, but now, but back then it was amazing feeling. So I started with brand deals and while you're doing that, you can also start doing affiliate marketing.

Paul Povolni (52:33.368)
Right. Yeah.

René (52:45.911)
This is kind of under underrated. It wasn't working for me really well in the beginning, but now it makes like a few K maybe in passive income without doing any extra like work. just found funnels where to put the links so it gets clicks all the time and just someone buys always. So affiliate marketing definitely worth exploring. And by the way, we're launching our own affiliate platform.

So if you wanna find tools to promote, you can go there. If you just check my social media, you will find the link there definitely. And then I would say digital products are one of the best things. You can do great simple PDF, master class video or coaching program, have a newsletter that you can also monetize where you give...

put your offers, brand deals. And one other great way, which we're doing right now is launching your own softwares. So I'll be honest here about Vibe coding. It works. You can create basic versions of any kind of a tool, know, thumbnail maker, some writing tool. You can, and you can monetize it. But if you're not a programmer or you don't have a developer that's working with you, I don't think it can ever be

Paul Povolni (54:01.443)
Right, right.

René (54:13.579)
a really, really good tool because there's a lot of tweaks that you have to do. So that's, that's kind of my angle because I, told my co-founder to quit his job back in late 2025. So we can go just full time on this and just really ship the best software that we can. And this is how I believe like you can have an additional income.

Paul Povolni (54:20.821)
Right, right.

René (54:43.309)
work with a programmer or developer if you have an audience to which you can promote it to. So these are like a few main ways I monetize and a lot of creators can monetize. And of course then there's also like, I would say physical brands that you can launch like through dropshipping or whatever. If you have audience, think anyone can launch their own chocolate brand or blue light glasses.

Paul Povolni (55:09.871)
Yeah.

René (55:13.079)
just anything.

Paul Povolni (55:15.629)
Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned there is the vibe coding and you know, it's still kind of in its early stages. You know, it's not even, I don't think if it's even a year old, maybe I'm wrong there, but one of the things that you highlighted that I think is the problem that it has right now is yeah, unless you're a programmer, unless you're somebody that understands how the thing is built and can look at the backend, look at the matrix, you know, behind the, behind the, the stuff that looks pretty.

you're going to be limited, you know, cause I see a lot of people talk about, Hey, you can, you know, use vibe coding to build out a website and it's like, well, but how do you swap out the image? You know, how do you put your own face in there? How do you swap out, you know, for your product? How do you swap out this? And that's where it's, it's getting better, but right now it's not that easy. And so even with creating apps, you know, you might be able to vibe code an app, but if there's tweaks,

It's not that easy. It's, it's still a little complicated to make those minor tweaks, especially with AI. Cause AI, sometimes you ask it to do with minor tweak and it'll like do this crazy thing. like, wait, wait. That's not what I wanted to do. I actually wanted you to just change this one thing and now you changed everything. At least that's what I've experienced. I've experienced that with images, you know, in trying to create an image, you know, Hey, just change this one thing in this image. And then spits back something. it's like, no, you changed everything. You totally messed it up.

And so I think we're still in the early stages of that, as you pointed out is, you know, vibe coding is amazing. haven't tried it myself yet, but from what I see, it's just amazing. And people are creating apps and they're saying, yeah, I created a website and I created an app and everything, but it's like, yeah, but when it comes time to update it, tell me how that goes. And, you know, let me see how excited you are about it then.

René (57:02.327)
Yeah. So true. And from what I've seen, like the best opportunity in vibe coding is not trying to vibe code tools, but have a vibe coding tool, know, emergent lovable. Many of these tools reached a hundred million ARR and like under a year or have digital products around vibe coding, like how to vibe code or

Paul Povolni (57:19.533)
Yeah.

René (57:32.056)
coaching programs around vibe coding, or you can also actually use like vibe coding and not just everything around it. But for like simple websites, simple tools that you can, you know, even sell. think there's still a lot of people that have businesses, traditional businesses, know, barbershop or whatever, and they may not have a website. So you can just copy paste all of their information, you know, that

about that business, put it in emergent, lovable or other vibe coding tools, give it a reference of design, how you want the website to look like. And it can create a beautiful website and under five minutes, it will cost like a dollar or two in token costs, I think. And you can sell it for a couple hundred dollars at least.

Paul Povolni (58:20.239)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (58:28.813)
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think the other, the other use for vibe coding in the place that it's at right now is in creating quick prototypes as well. You know, if you've got an idea for an app is you can vibe code an app and then you've got a literal working model for it that you can then test in the market and see if the market actually wants something like that. And if it does,

René (58:29.165)
Would you agree?

Paul Povolni (58:56.579)
Then you could look at, now I need to figure out how to create this in a more scalable version. And I think the same is with the website. think with the website, you can quickly launch a website using one of these tools that are out there that'll give you a website very quickly. And for some, might be a temporary, it might just be a funnel. just might be a landing page that you can quickly put to market something to test. And then if it works, then you're probably going to have to look at a way to create a more scalable version.

that is going to grow with your company because at some point in its current form, it'll hit a limit. It'll hit a place where it doesn't work anymore as you need, as you scale. At least that's my feeling right now.

René (59:41.048)
But yeah, you're totally right. I totally forgot about that prototypes part. Yeah, that's one of the most popular use cases probably. And also like a sales page, can also like copy paste some information about you. I don't know about your offer that you have in the Google doc and just say like create a landing page for me about that. yeah, I totally forgot about that and that's a good point.

Paul Povolni (01:00:07.407)
So now one of the other things that we've kind of talked about, but I want you to dive deep into is something new that's kind of come on the horizon is OpenClaw, agentic AI content. Agentic stuff has been around for a little longer, but OpenClaw has suddenly become the thing that anybody within the AI realm is now just fawning over and excited about and talking about and warning about and all of that stuff.

René (01:00:18.352)
yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:34.391)
So what's your experience with it? Tell me a little bit about it.

René (01:00:39.093)
Yeah, that's been wild. Only it was like a month back, right? When people started really talking about it and the CEO already joined OpenAI. I think this is a big deal and it will be the focus of 2026 and further. But my experience is limited here. So my developer helped me install it on my computer.

It's a bit technical, I'm not a technical person, so I just ask them to help me. So if you're listening to this podcast right now and you're also not technical, I highly recommend you to just ask someone to help you with it because it's not that easy, honestly, in my opinion. But if you do, and if you install it, definitely use a VPS, Virtual Private Server, I think it's called.

or your spare laptop, I installed it on my spare laptop and I now tried it only on one use case and I still didn't find like the right use case for me, think. Like I tried to use it for my AI directory and I said add a few, I have this section AI movies, so I said add more movies there, you know, so it found.

it went on the internet, it found the movies, gave short description, long description screenshots, picked the tags. So it did it almost good. A few, like a few of them. And then I asked like do 50, but then problems came. It provided bad links. It missed on some screenshots and it was kind of expensive. I

Paul Povolni (01:02:21.657)
Yeah.

René (01:02:34.414)
played around in like 30 minutes and I think I burned almost $30. So you don't want it expensive as that. You can hire someone and it will be maybe even cheaper. one thing is safety, having it their own environment first and learn how to use it there. And the second is probably cost optimization. you don't...

Paul Povolni (01:02:40.249)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:02:46.543)
All right.

René (01:03:01.78)
burn thousands of dollars in APIs because that's only going to help Anthropic. Everybody's using their API. And I've been saying this for a long time, but yeah, I think they already surpassed OpenAI in valuation or they're very close. I think they're at like 600 billion. It's crazy. And simply because they have good models. So now I'm in a stage where I just tried to cost optimize. I switched from Opus

Paul Povolni (01:03:07.758)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:03:18.093)
Wow.

Wow. Wow.

René (01:03:32.623)
Pro, think it's called the, our Opus 4.6, the model that I used, that was expensive. Then I tried Sonnet and it was a bit cheaper, but honestly, it, feels like the Sonnet model is like a high school kid. I have to guide and he's not sure what he's doing. And the Opus model is like a senior. So he even like suggested things on his own. You know, it was

Paul Povolni (01:03:51.631)
you

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:03:58.243)
Yeah, yeah.

René (01:04:03.022)
Almost perfect, but it was too expensive and that cheaper model of course, wasn't that smart. So it's a kind of a tricky situation. You know, I don't want to spend $50 or a hundred dollars a day on just API. So yeah, that's my experience for now. And I'm hoping to find a way to cost optimize it efficiently so I can use it for a lot of things. Did you try it already?

Paul Povolni (01:04:06.136)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:04:13.709)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:04:29.197)
Yeah, yeah. I haven't tried OpenClaw. I've played around with Opus 4.6. I've played around with Sonnet just to create some content. For what I was creating, I really didn't notice a huge difference in what it brought me. I'm not a power user by any means. I haven't tried OpenClaw just because I don't have the time to mess with it.

René (01:04:32.462)
.

René (01:04:36.75)
Thank

Paul Povolni (01:04:56.801)
And I know for a lot of people, they got super excited about it. They loaded it on their main computer and it did some bad things. did some, it did some very dangerous things, very scary things, very expensive things. And so I haven't really wanted to mess with open claw. It's for me, it's just, I'm, I'm an early adopter by nature. mean, I'll jump on. got the first iPhone when it came out, the first iPod, all of that stuff. But when it comes to AI and the power of AI.

I'm a little more wait and see wait, wait until it just matures a month or two. Cause it's changing so rapidly. mean, even open clause changed names multiple times. And so for me, I'm like a, I'm just going to wait this AI open claw out a bit. Now when chat GPT came out, I was all in and jumped in and was playing with it nonstop. But with things like open claw with the amount of power, something like that has, I'm just kind of a, well, let me just wait this out a month or two as it kind of levels out and.

René (01:05:33.826)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:05:53.595)
gets a little more mature. People kind of make the mistakes that can afford the mistakes. And then I'll probably jump in. Now I haven't jumped into agentic AI. Have you jumped into it and tell me your experience with it?

René (01:06:06.486)
That makes sense what you're saying also like you can wait around a few weeks and see and learn on people's mistakes and then on your own and regarding agenting AI. I wouldn't say I have a lot of experience but there's like one tool that where I use it often. So it's called I mentioned it already. It's called Hilo AI and there's this agent feature.

Paul Povolni (01:06:15.491)
Yeah.

René (01:06:35.712)
where you can like give it a prompt and it will create more images. That's what I consider agentic because it doesn't just create one image but I can create like 10, 20, 30 images from one prompt. I can create, yeah, I can also create videos like that. I used it to create a Coca-Cola ad just for fun, you know, posted it on Facebook and over a hundred people commented like they wanna see the tutorial. So then I made it.

Paul Povolni (01:06:50.284)
well.

René (01:07:05.184)
And you know, it's because normally you have to generate image by image and it takes a lot of time if you're making any type of content because there's always an image or video that doesn't feel right. You know, you want to change something. So if you have the power to generate 10 at once, that's great. You know, you can, I used it for example, for article images. We have some articles SEO.

blocks for our tools. And I didn't want to give this task to the designer, you know, not to spend too much time so we can focus on other things. So I just wrote a prompt, like create eight article thumbnails. I gave it an image reference of this design style that I wanted it with. And then I gave it the titles for each image, which were usually like two, three words and

It nailed it almost perfectly, like in my opinion. So I feel like this is a great use case and it also works for videos. If you're making a faceless video, know, anything you can, it will generate 10 eight second clips and you can then ask it, prompt it, put it all the videos together in a file and it will download you the one minute something file. So that's probably it's

Paul Povolni (01:08:04.355)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:08:25.965)
Wow. What was that AI? Can you spell that out? What was that?

René (01:08:30.71)
H-A-I-L-O-U-A-I, that video. Hylor, yeah, it's a Chinese company. I think they also own Minimax Audio. It's an 11-labs alternative and they have all kinds of image and video models inside of the tool, including Nana Banana.

Paul Povolni (01:08:36.515)
Okay, all right.

Paul Povolni (01:08:52.655)
Wow. man, Renee, this has been a wonderful conversation, very insightful. Congratulations on all the success with the 2.3 million followers and 30 to 50 million monthly views. That's amazing. It's awesome that you've been able to monetize that as well, going from charging $50 for a brand partnership or whatever it was that you mentioned to now the success that you're having and bringing on people and all of that.

René (01:09:00.92)
Thanks so much.

Paul Povolni (01:09:19.123)
that's pretty amazing. One of the things that I like to do as I wrap up the podcast is to just ask you, is there a question that you wish I'd asked you or a head smack that you'd like to share before we wrap this up?

René (01:09:31.756)
Hmm, question.

René (01:09:37.421)
Honestly.

Maybe something related to AI, I can't think of anything specific. Maybe like, should people do nowadays to get into AI?

Paul Povolni (01:09:47.193)
That's okay, I kind of just drop that on you here.

Paul Povolni (01:09:54.307)
So what should people do nowadays to get into AI?

René (01:09:57.753)
to start now, today, not tomorrow. Because a lot of people, you know, I get it. The world is a crazy place. We are all busy. You know, you have kids, you have job, etc., etc. And now I have a full-time business and I find it hard to find time to explore new tools. So I just set out a time every week to explore. And for me, it's usually Mondays where I'm energized after weekend.

Paul Povolni (01:09:58.819)
Hahaha

René (01:10:27.106)
You know, and Monday after evening, after dinner, I have several hours where I just play around and I just do what I want to do. You let the brain, you know, on fire and explore new ventures, new tools, anything. So find a time like that throughout the week, at least in one day where you can.

Paul Povolni (01:10:27.278)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:43.608)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:50.573)
Yeah, that's awesome, man. Well, thank you so much. And if people want to get ahold of you, they want to learn more about you. I know you mentioned also that you're building software. You have several websites and several products out there. Tell me how people can get those products and tell me a little bit about how to get ahold of you.

René (01:11:06.84)
Sure, if you just Google my name or search it on any social media, Rene Remsic or AI Trends with the Z will find me. You can take a look at my content on any social media platform you want or DM me on Facebook. And if you want to try our writing tool to also try create viral posts and threads in seconds, just go to Viralsky.ai and you can use the code

Go viral together to get your first trial just for $1 for one month. And other tools will be in my bio, but this is the main one I would recommend everyone to start with. It's simple, easy, and the plans are even affordable from $5 a month. So that's the way to start.

Paul Povolni (01:11:45.038)
That's awesome.

Paul Povolni (01:11:57.709)
Yeah. Well, I'll put some of those links in the, in the show notes as well. you can of course go to his beacons, dot AI forward slash Renee Remsik, or Rem sick. There's no S H in there and you can find more, more links in there. try sky, sky snail or is the skies nail.io.

René (01:12:10.531)
Yeah.

René (01:12:17.356)
Yeah, that's our tool. Sky snail is a thumbnail tool for YouTube thumbnails and the real covers.

Paul Povolni (01:12:24.213)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Renee. This has been a wonderful conversation. I appreciate you sharing your story and sharing your insights and your experience in going from a very few people paying attention to you to a lot of people paying attention to you. Congratulations on that.

René (01:12:38.892)
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and don't forget to start.