Jeremy Barnett Of Rad Intel On Why Every Serious Brand Needs A Strong Video Strategy

As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Jeremy Barnett.

Jeremy Barnett is a three-time founder and the Co-Founder and CEO of RAD Intel, an AI-first holding company that builds and acquires businesses across marketing, communications, creator technology and vertical SaaS. Before RAD Intel, he built and exited Trendy Butler. Today, Jeremy leads RAD Intel’s Artificial Intelligence Buyout, or AIBO strategy, combining disciplined acquisition with shared intelligence, technology, capital and go-to-market support to help strong companies scale. He speaks and writes regularly about AI, Decision Intelligence, marketing, M&A, capital formation and the future of company building.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we begin, can you please introduce yourself? Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us about your backstory and how you got started?

I’m Jeremy Barnett, co-founder and CEO of RAD Intel. We’re an AI-first holding company that acquires and builds businesses across marketing, communications, creator technology and vertical SaaS, then strengthens them with shared intelligence, proprietary technology, capital and operating infrastructure.

I began my career in consumer technology, where I saw firsthand how quickly audiences move and how much value can be created when product, content, distribution and customer experience work together. That experience got me thinking: could we make the decisions behind growth more predictive?

That question became RAD Intel. We started by applying AI to audience, creator, content and media decisions. Today, we’re taking that intelligence and technology further, using it across a portfolio of businesses to help strong companies make better decisions, move faster and scale what already works.

We call our acquisition approach AIBO, our Artificial Intelligence Buyout strategy. The idea is to acquire companies with real customers, revenue and category expertise, then help them move faster by adding intelligence, capital, infrastructure and shared capabilities around what they already do well.

I now spend most of my time working across AI, marketing, capital and M&A. Each company keeps its identity and customer closeness, while useful knowledge and proven systems can strengthen the broader portfolio.

None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person you are grateful to who helped you get to where you are today? Can you share a story about that?

Without question, that person is Brian MacMahon, Founder of Expert Dojo. Brian backed RAD Intel when it was still an early vision. We didn’t have years of financial history or a polished institutional story. We had a clear belief about where AI, media and audience intelligence were headed, and Brian understood the opportunity before it was obvious.

He made a meaningful bet on the company, but he was also making a bet on me. He saw the conviction, the experience and the potential to build something substantial.

That stays with you as a founder. The best investors evaluate what exists and recognize what could exist. They understand that the early stage of a company rarely arrives in a perfectly packaged form.

Brian taught me that conviction is active. It means making the call, opening the door and helping create the conditions for the next chapter of growth.

What personal or professional experience first made you realize how important having a video strategy really is? Was there a specific turning point or moment that changed your perspective?

My perspective changed when I saw that two videos with similar production value and similar reach could produce completely different business outcomes.

The outcomes seemed to depend much more on the match between the audience, the person speaking, the message and the moment.

That made me stop thinking about video as simply a creative format. Video gives you an extraordinary amount of audience intelligence. It shows you which questions matter, which objections keep appearing, whose voice carries credibility and what moves someone closer to a decision.

Once you build a process for learning from that behavior, video becomes part of the growth system. It informs the next brief, the next audience decision, the next creator partnership and the next allocation of budget.

Can you articulate for our readers why video has become such an essential part of building a serious brand today?

To me, video carries more of the brand at once than almost any other format. People can see the product, hear the point of view, evaluate the leadership team and decide whether the company feels credible. Every other format asks an audience to read the claim. Video lets them evaluate the person, evidence and conviction behind it.

As AI makes content easier to produce, this becomes even more important. The amount of technically competent content will continue to rise. Recognizable people, real expertise and a specific point of view become more valuable in that environment.

For customers, video can reduce uncertainty. For employees, it can create alignment. For investors and potential acquirers, it can show how clearly the leadership team understands the market and how confidently it can explain the business.

A serious video strategy is bigger than social media. It supports trust, sales, recruiting, customer education, investor communication and, over time, enterprise value.

What are the biggest mistakes you see brands making with video?

The biggest mistake is beginning with the deliverable instead of the decision.

Teams say, “We need a brand film,” or, “We need more short-form video,” before deciding who the audience is, what that person needs to understand and what should happen after they watch.

The next mistake is trying to say everything at once. The strongest videos usually do one job well. They answer one question, make one idea memorable or remove one point of friction.

Brands also create problems when they hand the entire process to an outside partner or an AI tool and remove the people who actually know the business. AI can make research, editing, versioning, localization and distribution dramatically faster. But the judgment and voice still need to come from the company.

Finally, too many teams stop at views. Reach matters, but the real question is whether the video improved understanding, generated qualified demand, shortened a decision cycle or helped someone take the next step.

What separates video that actually builds trust and authority from video that simply generates views?

Views tell you whether the content traveled. Trust shows up in what happens next.

Video builds authority when it is specific, useful and grounded in real experience. The person on camera understands the audience’s actual question, gives a clear answer and explains the evidence or reasoning behind it.

It also requires a real point of view. Content designed to avoid every possible disagreement usually becomes forgettable. Leaders build authority by saying something useful enough to help the right audience make a decision.

Consistency matters too. One strong video can get attention. A steady body of thoughtful, recognizable work gives people a better sense of how a company thinks.

We look beyond surface metrics to branded search, direct traffic, qualified inbound, the quality of sales conversations, investor questions, consultation requests and conversion. Getting attention is only the beginning. Building trust is what changes the next conversation.

Many business leaders know they should be doing video, but they hesitate because of cost, time, discomfort on camera or uncertainty about what to say. How would you advise them to get started?

My advice is to start with the questions you already answer every week. Pick one customer question, one investor question or one misconception about the category. Answer it the way you would across a table. That is usually more useful than trying to “create content.”

Use AI for the parts it handles well. It can organize research, identify recurring questions, help shape a rough outline, produce captions, locate strong clips and adapt one recording for several channels. Keep the final point of view and approval with the person accountable for the business.

I also wouldn’t over-script it. Know the opening, the two or three points you want to make and the final thought. The goal is clarity and credibility. Leaders become more comfortable by doing it consistently, not by waiting until they feel completely comfortable.

How should a brand decide what kinds of videos to create, where to distribute them and how often to publish?

Map the video to the decision journey. Someone discovering a problem needs different content from someone comparing options, evaluating a management team, preparing for a consultation or getting ready to buy.

Then choose the format based on what the audience needs at that stage. Short video can create recognition. Creator content can add relevance and credibility. Demonstrations, explainers, customer stories and executive conversations can build confidence. Detailed walkthroughs and objection-handling content can support the final decision.

The channel should follow the audience. The right platform is the one where your audience already goes to learn, evaluate or make decisions, not necessarily the one everyone is talking about.

Frequency should be high enough to create a learning loop, but not so high that the team starts publishing filler. One strong idea can become several useful pieces across multiple channels. The important thing is that every version stays connected to the same audience, message and business objective.

Based on your experience, what are the five most important things a brand should do to build a strong video strategy that produces meaningful business results? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Know the audience before you write the message: Reach and relevance are very different things. We’ve seen cases where creators with smaller, highly credible communities outperform larger names because the relationship with the audience was stronger. The right person already understood the culture, language and concerns of the people the brand needed to reach.

That principle sits at the center of Lickly. Lickly helps marketers understand audiences, evaluate creator fit and make marketing decisions they can defend.

Before a team writes the script, it should understand who matters, what that audience already believes, which questions keep coming up and what would make the message useful right now.

The creative process begins with audience intelligence, not a blank page.

2. Give every video one job: A video needs a clear responsibility. That job might be generating recognition, creating qualified demand, educating a customer, increasing consultation bookings, reducing confusion or helping investors understand the company more clearly.

At Altivera Vision, an emerging portfolio company focused on the ophthalmology industry, is a great example. Prospective patients may have questions about candidacy, recovery, financing, technology or what happens during a consultation. A video strategy can answer those questions before the patient ever speaks with the practice.

That gives the creative team a meaningful objective. Help the prospective patient move from uncertainty to an informed next step. A million views can look impressive, but they have limited value when the audience remains unsure about what to do next.

3. Keep a real expert in the frame: AI can accelerate research, scripting, editing, localization, versioning and testing. The audience still needs a credible human point of view.

That becomes especially important in categories where context matters. AVC works in multicultural and culturally nuanced marketing. Language, timing, lived experience and an understanding of the community all shape whether a message feels relevant.

Technology can help experienced people work faster and consider more possibilities. The final judgment needs to remain with people who understand the audience, the category and the consequences of getting the message wrong.

AI should help expertise travel further. It shouldn’t, however, make every company sound the same. Ever.

4. Build a system around the idea: A strong interview, customer story, demonstration or executive point of view should not live once and disappear. One substantial piece of video can become a hero asset, sales enablement, investor communication, short clips, written content, internal training and material for future campaigns.

RAD Amplify applies this thinking to creator marketing. A creator program should generate more than a set of posts. The team should learn which creators produced the right audience response, which messages worked, which content can be adapted and what should change in the next campaign.

Each step should inform what comes next. Research informs the idea. The idea informs production. Performance informs the next decision. That’s how a brand builds a repeatable growth capability instead of depending on isolated moments of success.

5. Measure what changed and keep the learning: Views and completion rates are useful indicators, but business outcomes matter more today and might include qualified leads, branded search, sales-cycle movement, consultation conversion, customer retention, recruiting interest or investor engagement.

The second part is learning. We have to stay vigilant on what worked and didn’t. The content, audience behavior, performance and durability of every campaign should remain connected so the organization can use that knowledge again.

This has a major impact across our own portfolio here at RAD Intel. Each brand in our portfolio has its own clients, expertise and identity. Shared intelligence helps us recognize which questions, formats and approaches are working across companies without forcing every brand into the same model.

We see the same thing in M&A. A company that understands its market, communicates clearly and can explain why customers choose it becomes easier to evaluate, support and scale.

A strong video strategy creates immediate commercial value while building a more informed company.

Looking ahead three-five years, what do you believe will change most dramatically regarding video creation, and what should leaders begin doing today to prepare for it?

The time and effort required to produce competent video will continue to fall. AI will make editing, personalization, localization, testing and distribution faster and more accessible. More companies will be able to produce more content, and the market will become even more crowded.

Volume will lose value as a differentiator. Judgment, identity, proprietary context, recognizable people, asset rights and brand consistency will become more important.

The strongest companies will use AI to make a clear point of view travel further. They will also build systems that learn from the audience response instead of producing more material without understanding what it accomplished.

I think M&A buyers will make a similar distinction. A company placing “AI-powered” in a presentation will carry very little weight. Buyers will want to see how the technology changes the workflow, improves decision-making, strengthens the economics and creates something the company can defend.

Leaders should start building those capabilities now. Get comfortable on camera. Organize the company’s knowledge. Establish clear approvals and rights. Decide where AI belongs in the workflow. Build a real measurement process. The tools will get easier, but trust and good judgment still have to be earned.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would start a movement I’d call “Bet on the Person, Not the Paper.” Every day, extraordinary people are overlooked because their story looks messy on paper. A complicated exit, a failed venture, a nonlinear path or no famous logo on their résumé can make someone easy to dismiss. But those things don’t tell you everything about what a person is capable of. I’m living proof. The most important check I ever received came from someone who ignored the noise and bet on me as a person.

The movement is simple: every person of influence…every investor, executive, and hiring manager should commit to making one bet a year on someone the system has counted out. One check, one job, one door opened for a person in the messy middle of their story. If a million decision-makers did that, you’d unlock a million second acts. And second acts, in my experience, are where the greatest companies and the greatest comebacks come from. You just never know. The person everyone else is waiting to see about might be the one who changes everything.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremybarnettradai/
RAD Intel:
https://www.radintel.ai/
Forbes Technology Council:
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/people/jeremybarnett

Thank you for sharing these insights!

About The Interviewer: Tavares Beverly is the Founder and CEO of Beverly Boy Productions, a national video production company that has helped organizations tell their stories through video for more than two decades. Over the course of his career, he has worked with everyone from Fortune 500 executives and healthcare professionals to politicians, nonprofit leaders, educators, and artists, gaining a unique perspective on the role communication plays in leadership, business, and human connection. A frequent contributor on topics including communication, entrepreneurship, leadership, and personal development, Tavares believes that the ability to communicate effectively is one of the most valuable skills a person can develop. His work is driven by a passion for helping organizations connect with their audiences and helping individuals unlock their potential through mentorship, perseverance, and meaningful relationships. To learn more, connect with Tavares on LinkedIn or visit BeverlyBoy.com. If you’re interested in using the power of storytelling and communication to grow your organization, strengthen your brand, or inspire your audience, he welcomes the opportunity to connect.