We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ralph Miguel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ralph below.

Ralph, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I have a commercial production background in Los Angeles, having worked there as a freelance artist for the past 10 years. We recently moved our family to Sydney, and along the way we traveled through a few countries such as Mexico, Japan, Thailand and Portugal.

While in Thailand, I made some content for a new TikTok account, intending it to be a kind of affiliate marketing account for AI platforms & tools. My first post I thought I’d kick things off by demonstrating a little hobby I’d been playing around in with a platform called Make.com. I showed the workflow of using AI to make patterns, then applying them to multiple kinds of clothing at once. My intention was to just show another way to use AI tools as I got ready to do affiliate posts. But that post wound up getting about 80,000 views, and hundreds of requests for more info. I had a new business on my hands, so I got working on a course and toolkits.

I now have over 140 people in my user group, who have bought my toolkits and watched my courses. I spend each week creating new automations, going live on TikTok, and doing Q&A’s with my users. Here’s to happy accidents.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I spent over a decade working on tools for commercial productions, movie trailers, and tech launches. I began to step into more senior roles, but they required me to take on longer shifts, and be away from my family at a time where my family was needing me to be home more and more. My wife had a brain trauma that took her a year to recover from in 2019, and i needed to help out more with the kids. 14 hour shifts for weeks on end was no longer something I could take on.

The pandemic actually brought in a deluge of work for me, but I was required to fulfill it all. I had a contracting business that drew new projects weekly from LinkedIn, but I had do every job myself. I was sleepless and exhausted. Mentally spent.

I liked having the flexibility of talking to different clients through the week, and having my hands in different projects, but I didn’t like having to execute every job myself every time. I tried subcontracting to overseas vendors, or junior artists, but that had it’s own issues, and I felt it wasn’t a good direction.

When I found automation, I craved to add as much creativity to it as I could, and I think that’s led to finding a warmed up audience of self starters and entrepreneurs on TikTok, Instagram, and now back on LinkedIn as well. It’s a very interesting progression.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

All of my businesses have been based around my work as a contractor, and I had no startup costs. I would seek out projects that had steeper learning curves, with high profile content I could use to attract more work. Eventually I invested in a few computers, but ran them from one desk with a USB switcher. A real one-man-band. I’ve built up a network on LinkedIn of 15,000 followers in 10 years, and a consistent posting schedule there has attracted work without the need for an advertising budget.

Having had that experience, I’ve challenged myself to build new ventures entirely from organic traffic. I enjoy making content that shows an inquisitive hunger, as opposed to a trendy sales pitch. My presence on TikTok has had a few posts reach over 100k now, entirely from organic traffic.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I illustrated the biggest pivot of my life in the previous questions. My wife’s brain trauma forced me to rethink how I work, and how to be more available to her and our girls. The pandemic brought in the opportunity to work from home on numerous projects, which was a much needed change for us.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to work on top secret movie trailers, tech launches, and tv commercials from my spare room forever. So I kept an eye out for an opportunity that would let me transfer some of my skills. I began to see that my ability to attract the work organically was as much of a skill as my ability to fulfill the jobs once they came in. So I dreamt of being able to build up an audience on TikTok or Instagram using some of the same organic techniques I used on LinkedIn. Instead of using computers that cost more than a car, I challenged myself to use apps on my iPhone and iPad. I tried to stay off the box as much as possible, while cranking out new content and attracting a new audience. There were ups and downs over 8 months, but it worked.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://stan.store/RalphMiguelAITools
• Instagram: ralph_miguel_automation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaellamotta/
• Other: TikTok! Ralph.Miguel.Automation