AI for Everyone: Unlocking Business Growth with Tech

Hello and welcome to the show. Before we begin, I'm out and about, so expect to hear the usual interruptions in the background, particularly cars driving by and people having conversations around me. OK, so today I'd like to look at AI in business. It's something I've shield away from on the podcast deliberately because AI is all the rage right now. AI. That's artificial intelligence. And so everybody is dropping podcasts and writing posts and everything, giving their own prognosis about how artificial intelligence is going to change business and blah blah blah blah blah.

But now that it has come up on the list, I figured I can blend my own to Kobo on the topic of artificial intelligence, and especially given much more nuanced perspective. Because when most business commentators talk about artificial intelligence, they're all talking from a very, very high level about how artificial intelligence is going to change the business landscape, is going to put people out of jobs. How is the new wave of the future?

It's a new form of consciousness and you know, blah blah blah, you know all that big stuff which I think is not really particularly important or useful to people like us listening to the podcast who are self-employed people, small business owners, people who are trying to get their companies off the ground. I mean we don't have time for all this highfalutin high fancy ideas about whether artificial intelligence is a new wave of consciousness and blah blah blah and this whole thing of relieving people of jobs and everything.

I mean, yes, those are valid macroeconomic concerns, but then, you know, we're not politicians or ministers of economics or or ministers of trade and finance. You know, these are not the sorts of people that listen to this podcast. So I'm going to go ahead and tackle this question about the role of artificial intelligence in business. But I'm going to keep it nuanced and focus on people who run small businesses, self-employed people and maybe people who are the ideation stage of business.

So this is not going to be a high philosophical podcast. If you want any of those things, you know artificial intelligence. Is it truly intelligent? How is it going to change society? What are the ramifications for the family, for this politics and for truth and all that? Then you know, you go check a different podcast and don't listen to this one. But then if you want a practical what shall we do next? What is step one?

Step 2, Step Three-step ABC when it comes to artificial intelligence in business, then yeah, keep listening to this podcast episode and I'll do my best to make sure that I deliver value on this premise. Now, First off, like I do in the other podcast, I like to define the terms that we're working with here just so that it helps to keep the conversation honest and focused. You know, when we we have a clear definition of what it is that we're talking about.

Now, artificial intelligence is hard to define, so I can't do my usual thing of giving a working definition. But there are a couple of things that I want you guys to pay attention to when we're talking about artificial intelligence. Number one, what I want you guys to pay attention to is that it's an algorithm. So let's stop thinking that this thing is magic or that is truly intelligent. It's just an algorithm. And #2, I want you guys to pay attention to the fact that when people say AI nowadays, what they're talking, what they're most likely paying attention to the large language learning models, let's just say language models, let's just leave it at that because there have been different forms of artificial intelligence that have been with us for a very long time.

The Google search algorithm is artificial intelligence, you know in quote because it's the original algorithm that most of us. When I say most of us, I mean average people, everyday people like me, for instance, You know, I don't have a computer background, but I have been interacting with the Google algorithm for the last, I don't know, 20 years, maybe even more than that. You know, because you go to Google, you're searching for stuff, things like that.

I mean, it was an algorithm and I was trying to serve a purpose to give you the most relevant answer or solution to your problem. So a lot of us have been interacting with artificial intelligence for a very long time. It's just that we have not been aware. So if you've been doing Google searches for the last 2530 years, you have already been interacting with artificial intelligence. So don't be scared. It's been here, it's been with us for a very long time.

You've already been interacting with it. For those of us who use, sorry, excuse me, what's it called this transcription software or dictation software, you know, you you put on Microsoft Word, that's back when you know all of us had to use desktops and stuff like that. So you put on Microsoft Word, you Jack in your headpiece and then instead of typing, you start dictating. That's also another form of an algorithm, voice recognition software.

So we've been dealing with artificial intelligence for a very, very long time. So that's the second thing that I want you guys to bear in mind. Number one, it's just an algorithm. Don't be scared. Number two, language models. When people say AI nowadays, what they mean is language models, things that are trying to understand language or predict language. So ChatGPT, Google Gemini, what else? And then all those ones that you put a bunch of text in it and then it helps you to create an image.

Yeah, so that's what people when people say, yeah, nowadays, that's what they mean, language models. But then there are other forms of artificial intelligence out there. Then #3, another thing I want you guys to pay attention to statistical analysis. So OK, hold on. OK, statistical analysis. That's number three. Then number four, another thing I want you guys to pay attention to is generative Pre trained Transformers.

That is what the GPT means in ChatGPT, generative pre trained Transformers. Now let me go into some detail about what all these terms, what all these things mean. So like I said, I'm not trying to define AI, but there's some key concepts that I think you guys ought to understand. So when we say it's an algorithm, algorithm just means if this then that. So that's just what an algorithm means basically. I mean for an everyday chap like you or me, everyday guy or girl algorithm just means if this then that.

So I mean for those of you who have heard about you know, Americans doing drone drone strikes in the Middle East and or whatnot. I mean that's that's a perfect example of an algorithm. If the drone flies over this area and scans and the drone is able to identify that XY and Z are militants or look like militant hotspots, then drop 2 bombs. So if this, then that. So that's all this thing is. It's an algorithm. It's not magic.

So don't be scared. No language models, since they've been algorithms in the past that have been trying to identify shapes, identify like the dictation software and stuff like that, trying to identify voice, all kinds of things. There's been this fascination to see if we can get them to understand language or to give responses in language. Now remember I spoke about generative pre trained Transformers, that's the GPTS.

Now Google is one is already a kind of a pre trained transformer. You give it a lot of information that you trained it on and then you give it a question and it's supposed to give you a supposed to give you a response. Now The thing is Google used to give the responses in terms of web links. These are the web links you might be interested in. But now Gemini, that is Google's version of ChatGPT we're now, is now trained to give you that information in terms of text.

So instead of just showing you a number of links, it will give you some text and then it does all of that using statistical analysis. Well, in fact we're almost at 10 minutes. So let me just stop it here because I think I'm getting I'm going beyond what the focus of this podcast was supposed to be. But, but only what I'm trying to get you guys to understand is when you hear artificial intelligence, you're basically just talking about something that is on your phone or on your computer that is an algorithm.

The thing most likely is built around language models. So it's trying to answer your questions using words, using words that you can understand and it's also using statistical analysis to try and make sure that you are getting the right words. But because he's using statistical analysis, the words will not always be 100% correct. So because of that, when you put something you ChatGPT or into Google Bad or into Google Gemini, it's statistical analysis.

So it doesn't mean that the answer is 100% correct. So you have to be the subject matter expertise to be able to determine when the results it gives you are useless or when the results are on point then. OK, yeah. So that's just what you need to know. So it's on your phone. It's on your computer. It's just an algorithm trying to give you an answer that you understand in the language that you speak and using statistical analysis.

So because of that, it's not 100% correct. Make sure that you check everything. So what are we to do now as business people? And how are we supposed to use artificial intelligence in our businesses? Remember I said I'm going to look at people that are at the ideation stage. That means you're trying to figure out what business should I get involved in. I'm also going to look at people who are in the product market fit stage or the market validation stage.

That means that you've decided on your idea, you've launched out into the market and it looks like you've been able to find a couple of customers. Then I want to look at people in the traction or in the growth stage. That means you figured out what you want to do. You found some customers and the goal is now that you have 10 customers, you want to get 20 or 30 or 40 or 50. And then I'm also going to see how, OK, how artificial intelligence, how that factors into content creation, because there are a bunch of us who are trying to use content marketing to grow our businesses.

So now let's start off with people in the ideation stage. So if you're getting ready to start the business, instead of joining people and shouting about how artificial intelligence is going to destroy society and blah blah blah blah blah, use it to help you figure out what kind of business ideas you should be starting in the first place. So use Google BOD. Sorry, use Gemini. Gemini. BOD doesn't exist anymore, so it's now Gemini.

So use Google Gemini. Or use ChatGPT. Or use whatever it is that is on your phone or whichever one that you have purchased and try and research business ideas that you could start. In the old days we had just used Google. They would have thrown up some web links or articles written by somebody and some you know, there'll be lots of advertisements there, some ideas, not well thought out. But if you pick up and ChatGPT and you say I'm a 25 year old Nigerian who studied computer computer tech in OAU, I'm interested in, I'm interested in agric ideas, running a poultry,

things like that. But I'm not sure which business idea to start. What do you think would be a good business idea for someone my age with my own skill set and who is looking to start businesses in blah blah blah blah blah and then you throw out the prompt. The thing is, it'll give you a response. The response is going to be in English, in words that you can understand, and they're going to be some pretty interesting ideas there, some that you may have considered and some that you might not have considered.

Now, the whole point of what I'm trying to push forward is this. Instead of staying at home and thinking for weeks upon weeks upon weeks, because coming up with a business to start can actually take that long, you can sit down with ChatGPT, and with Google Gemini and with whatever it is that you have on your phone or your computer. And in a matter of hours you can come up with some ideas about what is workable and then what is not.

So that instead of spending months thinking of ideas, you can actually wrap this up in maybe two or three days so that next week you can actually start going to work on trying to figure out which business idea is much more feasible and much more workable. So at the ideation stage, use these things to cut your research time considerably. In fact, let me give you a real life example. My mom is retired. She's back home. She wants to set up a A an NGO.

Because my mom has always been about female empowerment, not in the economic sense but say, but yeah, in economics, yes, but first of all, education. Because my mom thinks that one of the things that gave her an edge, her and her sisters above other females in their own village, because my parents were both village people. My father grew up in the village, my mom grew up in the village, so they're not Township people.

So I'm a Township kid because I was born in Makudi. Marguli is the capital of Benway State. From there we moved to we moved to Abuja. Abuja is now the Federal Capital territory. After that, I lived in Lagos and I lived in LAF and I lived in Aberdeen. So you can see that I'm pretty much a Township kid. My parents were village kids. So my father thinks that what set him apart was the quality of education he received and the same thing with my mom.

So that's where my mom is at right now. Those are the things she wants to do. Coming up with names for the NGO was a problem. Actually, I've been thinking about this thing for more than a month. I happened to be at home with the kids during Easter, not this current Easter, I mean the the the last Easter. And so I just, you know, I just thought OK mom bring a computer and because she she has a Mac, so on. On the Mac there's she uses the Microsoft what's it called, the Microsoft web browser.

I can't remember what it's called but bottom line is Bing. Yes Bing is already Bing already has charged GBT pre installed. So we sat down there came up with a basic prompt and you know sharp, sharp, sharp. In less than 20 minutes we had I think about 6 names that my mom found to be very convincing. So sitting now for months, coming up with names was a problem, because what happened, how it works here in Nigeria is you come up with a name, then you send it to your lawyer.

Your lawyer now checks the database of the Corporate Affairs Commission to see what names are available or not, and then sends in an application. And then the Corporate Affairs Commission might accept or deny because it's it might imply this, or it's too close to this, or it's too close to that. So it can be a hassle. You sit down, you come up with three or four, send it to your lawyer. The lawyer does the whole thing.

Three of them are rejected. You have to start thinking again. So this whole thing of coming up with the right name, it actually can actually can take, it actually can take weeks or maybe even months. But we sat down with what was already on her computer, so she didn't have to install anything new. She didn't have to buy anything because she's a Microsoft person. So it's there, it's already installed, it's already in the background in Bing.

And then we're able to come up with seven. Was it 7? I know it's not more than 10 names. And you know, sharp, sharp, problem solved. You caught any, you get the whole point. She sat down with her son, and 20-30 minutes we're able to solve the problem once and for all. So it's the same thing. What business name should you have? What business should you start? You can use this thing to do a lot of research. If I if you are at the ideation stage, then you can also use it to come up with all kinds of interesting ideas about different sales and marketing ideas that you can try out since these things.

That's ChatGPT and Gemini and Clawed and the rest of them, since they give responses in, like I said, language models. Since they give responses in English, I hear that some of them have also started doing work in Middle Eastern languages and things like that. So since they give responses in English, basically in languages that you understand, you can use it to draft proposals and presentations. You know, I have actually done that.

I was tight on time. I knew the parameters of what it is that I wanted in the proposal, and so I just made it to be part of the prompt, entered it, the thing came out and then I now edited the final document. Sorry, one moment. I need to end this call. OK, sorry about that. The call was coming through. I'll just wrap up this episode and then call the person back. So where was I? Yes, I've used it to draft proposals and instead of spending 2-3 hours drafting a proposal, you know, you spend 20

minutes drafting a proposal because you throw in the parameters for the for the proposal, it comes out with the documents, you edit the document and then instead of spending 2-3 hours, you know, 30 minutes you're done and then you send it off. Now let's look at people who are in the product market fit stage or the market validation stage. Basically people who decided on what the idea is and you've been able to find a bunch of customers.

Now these are some of the things that you can use ChatGPT to help you do. You can use it to help you refine your ICPICP is the ideal customer avatar, the ideal customer profile, the ideal customer target, your ideal target base, whatever it is that you want to call it. Now, when you're a young business person, it helps know exactly who it is supposed to be chasing after. And all these things, ChatGPT and Googlebot, they can help you figure this out.

Because you're a human being, you have lots of things to do. You're in a relationship, you have kids, you have a nine to five. You're doing this thing as a side, as a side project. So sometimes it's not easy to see all the commonalities of what you're dealing with, but if you have a bunch of WhatsApp messages or you have a bunch of invoices and stuff like that, you actually can create a prompt. You actually can create a prompt saying I am a let me see, OK,

let me go back to wedding photography since that was my where I started my journey. I say I'm a wedding photographer. I've been doing business for eight months. I've dealt with 20 clients so far. Of the 20 clients, six of them work in the civil service. Five of them have. Five of them have master's degrees, 80% of them are based in Abuja, blah, blah, blah. You know, you just put in the whole thing there. And then at the Sorry about that, another phone call came in, OK.

I guess it's anyway, I was like I lost my train of thought, OK, so you can enter that whole thing as a prompt and then at the end of the prompt, you're basically just trying to ask ChatGPT or Gemini, who you think your ideal customer profile is and it's going to give you a report or it's going to give you an answer that might make sense or that might not. But now you're going to have a sense of the ideal person that you should be targeting or trying to go after in your marketing efforts, or when you're trying to come up with Instagram advertisements or Google advertisements and then things like that so you can use it to refine who your ICP is, so you know who it is that you're chasing.

Because I've been saying on the podcast time and time again that we need to know exactly who it is that we're chasing after. Because if you don't know who you're chasing after, you're going to spend a bunch of time and money running after people. Wasting time and money running after people who could never end up being ideal clients for you. Because I have seen situations where there's this lady who was in the fashion space, This was at the British Council event.

One of the, what's it called, was one of the these business incubation things. And there's a lady who was giving a presentation about her ideal customer profile, how it's a woman between this and this and this X number of children walks in this place, this possible income, you know, all these kinds of things that people talk about. But then at the end of the day, you look at the invoices, you look at the trading history and then you find out that who she thought was her ideal customer profile actually was not based on her trading history.

So she thought she should be chasing this kind of person. But then you look at your invoices, you look at, you look at your invoices, you look at, look at all the people that you've done business with so far. And then you figure out that, oh, well, actually, even though I would like to be chasing this person, you know, my ideal customer actually is somebody else. So again, is that to research? Yeah, to refine your ICP.

Now for people who are in the traction stage or in the growth stage, you know what idea you want to start. You've been able to figure out who you should be chasing, and right now you want to go from 10 customers to 20 customers to 30 to 40 to 50. You can use ChatGPT. You can use Gemini to help you create e-mail, follow up sequences you can use to research community building ideas. That's for those of you who want to use Instagram to build a community or a newsletter to build a community.

You can use it to research relationship building tactics. You can use it to research relationship nurturing tactics. What difference in relationship building and relationship nurturing is this? Relationship building is when somebody already is a customer, they've already given you money, so you're trying to move the relationship forward. Relationship nurturing is when people have not yet given you money. You think you guys might do business in the future, so you just want to keep them around so that they hear from you every once in a while.

You're trying to nurture that relationship so that when they're ready to buy, they think of you and not your competition. So that's the difference between relationship building and relationship nurturing. Relationship building people have given you money. They're already your customer, they're your client. You just want to improve that relationship. Relationship nurturing people haven't given you money yet. You hope they're going to give you money in the future, so you want to keep them in the loop.

Then of course you can also use artificial intelligence. Gemini, HI GB T all of these things can use it for content create to create a content calendar, to create images and texts. Hello stuff like that. Now you guys have heard me use one word which is prompts to get a response from these things since these are language models. Remember in the beginning I said that was one thing. What did you guys to pay attention to #1?

It's an algorithm, #2 it's a language model, number 3 it's using statistical analysis. So since it's a language model, you have to actually type in a string of words to get the information that you need. We call that a prompt. The more detailed your prompt is, the better. So the structure of a prompt that I want you guys to start off is with this. Always start over a prompt saying who you are. Then always give the context or the problem that you're trying to solve, the goal or the outcome that you're trying to achieve, or the result that you're aiming for, and then you ask the question.

So that way since this thing is doing statistical analysis, it has plenty of text that they can analyse and come up with some convincing results at the end of it. So don't just say don't just go to ChatGPT and then type Best marketing idea for wedding photographers. You're going to get a very generic answer. But if you go there and say I'm a 21 year old wedding photographer who is based in Ibano, I've been in business for six months and I think my ideal customers are brides who have master's degrees from London, UK

and Lagos. I would want to attract, do more business with these kinds of brides in 2024. Give me marketing ideas. Give me the most workable marketing ideas that would that would work on Facebook and on Instagram. So you can see now that's that's a prompt. It's a long prompt. And then you hit enter, ma'am. And then the responses that you're going to get are going to be tailored to you because it's going to use statistical analysis to try and figure out that for somebody who is a wedding photographer in Nigeria,

in the badon, trying to attract brides from this part of the country with this qualification, and he wants to do so only on Instagram and Facebook, what are the best ideas? You can see that you're going to get useful ideas, but if that is your reality and you sit down, you just say best marketing ideas for wedding photographer and you hit enter. He's going to give you. He's going to give you pages and pages and pages of all kinds of ideas for Facebook, for LinkedIn, for WhatsApp, for, I

mean for, for everything. You'll just throw it all out there and then you will not have to start picking and choosing which one works for me. So your prompts have to be detailed. Your prompts have to be, yeah, more detailed and more focused. So let me just leave it at that since we're already close to 30 minutes. So this is a proper way to think about AI. Don't worry about all the existential issues, just see how you can use it in your business.

Particularly if you're a small business person, you're self-employed, or you're at the ideation stage, this is the right way to think about it. So connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Iyede. I'm the host of the show. You can find the correct spelling of my name from the link where you're listening to this podcast. Also my e-mail address is there if you want to reach out then what else? Also connect with me on WhatsApp.

My phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234 if you are not Nigerian. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.