Level Up Your Career & Business with AI: Insights from NBC Youth Empowered

Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. Before we begin, apologies because today is going to be a very noisy episode, and that's because I'm out and about. Today's schedule for me is going to be very tight, and really this is the only time I have to make a podcast. So I figured, let me just get the phone out, get this thing done so that at least today's episode is delivered. I'm going to make a brief detour because for the last four or five days we've been talking about challenges of selling your fintech idea in Nigeria.

But I want to make a detail to share with you some of the good stuff that I discussed with young folks courtesy of the NBC. That's the Nigerian Bottling Corporation. That is the what will I say? Should I say that the local distributor of Coca-Cola drinks, you know, drinks in the Coca-Cola family, So Fanta, Coke, Sprite, all that good stuff. So they were in my city, in Abuja on the 17th and the 18th of April. The 18th of April was yesterday and the event was titled the Youth Empowered Event.

This was the 2024 edition and has been flagged off in several cities, several states. So yesterday was the Abuja edition and I was one of the speakers. Now, the things that that was spoken about at the event were financial literacy, career planning, personal development, and the use of artificial intelligence in Korea and in business. And that was why I was on the stage because even though my speciality is sales and business development, it's no secret for,

well, those who know me anyway, that I use artificial intelligence every day for my work. Those of you who follow me on LinkedIn or on Instagram, I'm sure you've noticed that all the images that I used to promote the podcast are AI generated and that those sorts of stuff. And so the organizers thought I would be a good candidate to talk about artificial intelligence, how you can use that to promote your business and to promote your career since it's something that I use every single day now.

My Co host was a chap who's a in the productivity space and also in the International Development consulting space. His name was, his name is rather in Kemjika. And so both of us handled the session. So I'm just going to share with you some of the good stuff that we shared with the 16 to 35 year olds. Although in my own opinion, I think the classification, the age range that Coca-Cola was using for the event I think was too broad because 18 to 35, yes,

technically speaking, because speaking in a geopolitical sense, 16 to 35 is young folks. But let's face it, you know, 18 to 20 year olds sometimes have very little in common to do with 30 to 35 year olds. So, yeah, if I could give feedback to the organizers of the event, I guess that would just be it that, you know, next future edition should be more targeted. So, you know, you have a bunch of people where they have more in common.

So maybe 30 to 35 or 20 to 30 or 16 to 20, but not 16 all the way to 35 because that is a rather wide stretch. So we started off our part of the discussion. Our session was the last on the different kinds of AI, families of AI, classes of AI. Now, the reason why in Kemjika and I took this approach was because when lots of people discuss artificial intelligence, typically they're talking about specific tools. And The thing is new tools come out every week, every month.

And so you're sitting through a seminar representation where someone is talking about 30 or 40 of maybe even 50 AI tools. And I think that that is overwhelming. So the approach we took was to talk about classes or families so we can get people thinking in terms of groups and to try and figure out which group it is that can solve the problem that you have on the hand. So First off, we designed artificial intelligence as using computers to solve problems and for decision making.

We decided to take care of this whole thing of as artificial intelligence and existential threat, are they behaving like human beings, blah, blah, blah, and ethical concerns. So we can discuss all these things at the future at some other or let's say session, some other event. But I thought that we should focus squarely on how we can use artificial intelligence to be much more productive in our businesses and in our careers.

So that's what we focused on, AI using computers for problem solving and decision making. So on the types of artificial intelligence, we just decided to focus on four different categories. That is large language models, Gemini, HR, GB, T, those sorts of things. Basically AIS that you talk through. So I talk to by typing. Then speech recognition, that is AI artificial intelligence that recognizes things that you say and either carries out the commands, sorry, no, recognise things that you say and then convert them into text.

And there's pattern recognition, that's AI computers that recognise shapes and patterns and things like that. And then image processing and design, which is stuff that I use every day when I'm trying to come up with images, graphics, infographics, whatever, for my blog posts on the on the daily, whether on LinkedIn or on Instagram. So those were the categories that we discussed. Now, of course the focus that we, the thing that we laid emphasis on during the session was on large language models,

that's Gemini and ChatGPT, because that is readily available on everybody's phone. And it's pretty much the main thing that we're going to use to build our businesses and careers because we can use Gemini and ChatGPT for coming up with ideas, for looking for new perspectives and to help us write better or express certain ideas better. So that was the focus. More or less also was the focus because Gemini and ChatGPT are free.

You can access them on the web browser of your phone and they are available to everyone because everybody has a smartphone these days. Well, almost everyone in this part of the world has a smartphone these days. So that was the focus. Then, of course, we also went into how artificial intelligence works. It's really important for people to get a sense of that because it gives you a sense of its, its potential and its limitations.

Because some people speak about GPT as if it's as if it's God, as if it's a know all and a be all. And this is the pinnacle of human existence. So I wanted to bring people's expectation down. Let's realize that this is just a tool. Let's figure out how it works. Let's know what his limitations are. And then we have a realistic idea about how we can work in our businesses and in our careers or not. So we pointed out that it involves data aggregation.

So AI is all about all the data that has been fed onto the Internet and trained on these machines. So like I pointed out to one of the panelists, I remember that I'm in Abuja. There's one problem that we're trying to OK, well, not trying to solve anyway, but I just pointed out how you can use AI to solve lots of problems. And those are baggy, baggy gentleman in the audience. Baggy is the, they are the Baghi is the language of the Gwari people in this part of the world in the Abuja, Zabuja, North Central.

OK, well anyway, in Abuja anyway, the people who are originally native to this land are the Baghi or the Gwari people. And so the fellow is on a dating site and Abuja pointed out that is AI and just to show how we can use AI to solve romantic problems for instance, not just problems in business or career. So anyway, so like I pointed out to the to the whole group and to the baggy fellow, that because it works by data aggregation,

chances are that you're not going to have lots of information about baggy culture and baggy females on the Internet. Because artificial intelligence has been developed largely by, let me just say folks in a certain part of the world and have added certain kinds of data. So if you're looking for information about baggy culture, you know, stuff like that, it's not going to come up with much. So that is a limitation that has come up because of the data aggregation and the limited data that we have fed into this tool.

Then also pointed out that it doesn't really understand the data per SE. It's mostly working on statistical analysis and probability. And because it's about probability and it has to give an answer, we have to verify at the end of the day. So it doesn't really understand what it's putting out. It's just coming up with statistically things that go together. So we do have to verify the output that we get at the end of the day.

So we went into that. Then of course in Chemjika moved on to how to prompt using AI. Because the reason why lots of people are not getting benefits of using artificial intelligence, whether it's for image design or whether it is for writing or whatever, the reason why people are not getting the most out of it is because they are not prompting correctly. Now, a prompt is a directive, a prompt is a command. A prompt is an instruction that you give to your computer.

But when it comes to artificial intelligence, there's a way that we have to go about it for best results. So First off, we have to, oh, sorry, alarm has gone off. OK, 10 minutes. So I have to bring it to a close. My alarm just went off. OK, So First off, we have to be specific. The more specific you are, the better. You have to provide some context so that it knows what to restrict its information, the results to because, you know,

artificial intelligence, AI tools have been trained on the whole Internet. So we need to be able to restrict the context and then use questions instead of giving demands and then iteration of the feedback process. That is where it gives you a response and then you respond by saying that, OK, I like this, I like this and you know, get rid of that. So let me stick to the example that we've used so far, which is neither business nor career.

And that is the baggy gentleman who is interested in looking for a wife using artificial intelligence. So if you are using an artificial intelligence to to look for suggestions on how to find a wife. I mean, in his own case, being specific would be specific about him, who he is, his goals, you know, things like that. Of course, I also warned them that since at AI tools also do data gathering, you know, don't put information about, you know,

yourself, your children's name, your spouse names, things like that, your address, things that you wouldn't want readily available over the Internet. So yeah, so in this case, you know, the instructions would be something like, I'm a 35 year old male living in Abuja working in. So, so, so and so Angbagi by tribe would like to be involved in the theme, be involved dramatically with the female who is also buggy and Christian and you know, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah. Give me suggestions for how I would go about finding this kind of a person. And then you enter the prompt so you can see that this is fairly specific and the responses that you're going to get at the end of the day would be much more practical than if you just put up in an AI tool. How can I find a wife? If you just put up how can I find a wife or how can I find a girlfriend? Then you're going to get lots of responses.

Some things might work, some things might not work. There's going to be there's going to be a long essay of every conceivable way that you might find a wife. But then when you narrow it down this way, you're going to find suggestions that are much more helpful, much more culturally nuance. Also location nuance because you put there that you're in Abuja. So I know you get the point. OK, so where was I? OK, anyway, so that's an example about how to use, how to prompt using AI.

Then we moved into, of course, I had to tie it back to sales and business development. OK guys, sorry about that. The noisy pickup truck was just driving by. OK, so now of course, I had to tie it back to business development at the end of the day. So I introduced them to stages of business development. I mean, the thought process that we go through, you know, prospecting, qualification, discovery, proposal, presentation and close, which is trying to look for people who might be interested in your product or service, where you can find them.

How you start the conversation, how you make sure you're talking to the right person, how you discover if they have a problem that your product or service can solve, How you figure out if the problem is worth solving. Because remember, if somebody has a problem, but it's a small problem, they're not going to spend money to solve that problem. How do we go about making an effective presentation so that they take action?

And so later examples were used, later prompting examples that we use on Gemini and Chat TBT was to figure out the kinds of questions or the kind of thought process that we should go through when it comes to prospecting. So in this case, a prompt that we used for a gentleman who was there who sells female, female shoes, I found that to be quite interesting because, well, First off, he was an elderly gentleman. I mean he looked old enough to be my father.

So I'm surprised that he was in the business of selling female shoes. Now, for some reason, I just always assumed that it is only females who sell female shoes. Anyway, so of course he sells female shoes. He's based in Abuja. So of course he wants to sell to professional working class women in Abuja and that was the nature of his prompt. But I told him that he had to be a little bit more specific because professional working class woman in Abuja, I mean that is broad.

So you can say professional working class woman in Abuja between the ages of 20 and 25 who are involved in the banking industry or oil and gas industry or this or that. And I told him that he even have to be specific about styles because women wear high heels, women wear flats, women wear those comfortable looking ones. I mean all within the work context. So if you want AI to come up with e-mail copy for you to send to your clients, I mean, it really has to be that specific.

So it's not an e-mail or sales copy that is generated by AI that is general and speaks to the whole world. But it's going to be targeted very specific so that when your ideal customer opens that e-mail or opens the WhatsApp message or opens the SMS message, it'll be like that thing is talking to them. So that was one example that we gave in a business context about how you ought to be specific and provide context using them artificial intelligence.

So of course people had lots of questions. We tried to get people on LinkedIn because LinkedIn is a useful tool for growing your business and also for professional networking and career development and career advancement. So we tried to get people on LinkedIn try to show how you can use AI tools to optimise your profile. What else? Optimise your summary, use AI for content production, all that jazz, all that sorts of stuff.

So this is too much doubt to to put into one podcast anyway, but I just wanted to share the good stuff that we spoke about with the young UNS. And then also to let you guys know that AI is nothing fancy, nothing new, nothing magic, magical. These are practical tools that we can use every day to improve our businesses. So we shouldn't think that, you know, it's a God, it's the end all and the be all, and it's the pinnacle of human evolution.

Or rather, it is just a simple practical tool that we can use to solve problems. If you want a wife, you can use that to brainstorm, get ideas, find a wife. If you want a boyfriend, you can use that, brainstorm, get some tools, find a boyfriend. Although in my own opinion, the best way to use it would be to try and use AI, artificial intelligence tools to try and figure out how we can make more money because life gets easier or simpler rather, you know, the more money that we have.

OK, scratch that. Let's forget the whole thing about simpler but bottom line is money is an exchange of value and it provides options and the more options that we have the better. So instead of living life being worried about can we pay school fees or not, can I pay my tithe or not, can I fill my car tank or not? Mum is ill, can we pay for the pay for the hospital bills or not? And this is a very real life example because I lost one of my uncles recently.

So uncle has passed. Can we bury him with dignity or not? I mean, so these are real things. So really I think the more money we have, the better because the more options that we have to solve problems and to make our lives much more comfortable. So I really think with AI tools that are already in your pocket anyway, because as you're listening to me on this podcast right now, you already have AI plugged into your ears or or rather in your pocket.

You know, the tools are already in your hands, in your pocket. We might as well use it to see how we can improve the quality of our life. So let's see how we can use AI to make more money, to get our businesses to improve, to advance in our careers. And yeah, anyway, you guys get the point. So let me just wrap it up here. So thank you very much for your time and attention. Always remember, you guys can connect with me on WhatsApp.

The phone number is 08064662140 and the country code is +234. For those of you who are not Nigerian, then connect with me on LinkedIn. You can confirm the spelling of my name. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. Yeah, so confirm the spelling of my name from the link while listening to this episode. My e-mail address is there as well in case you want to connect with me over emails. So yeah, just get my name,

connect with me on socials. But LinkedIn, I'm there every day. Instagram, I'm there maybe every two days. Any other social media, you might catch me maybe once a month. But I'll do my best to respond for those of you who reach out to me. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.