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Hello and welcome. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I solve sales and marketing challenges and I'm making today's recording at home, so expect to hear some interruptions in the background. Now, the goal of this podcast is business education, so please spread the word so that your friends and family members in Nigeria and abroad can benefit from the questions that we tackle. They can do that by subscribing on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, or any player of their choice.
And if you have any sales and marketing questions, bring them to me. You can call, you can SMS, you can WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Now today on the show, I want us to look at how we can use AI to build a business beyond clicks. Let me repeat, I want us to look at how we can use AI, artificial intelligence to build a business beyond the clicks. OK, let's define a few things Now. When I say AI, artificial intelligence, I mean the LLM
tools, the Lang, the large language models, yeah, LLMS. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about ChatGPT, Claude, Google, Gemini, you know, all those stuff. Even the image generators, the sound generators, you know, things like that. So basically if you have one of these tools on your phone or your computer where you type in a bunch of texts, then it gives you output around solving whatever problems it is you have, then that is what I mean by AI.
But most of the times I just mean charity, BT or Google Gemini. Now, why am I talking about this? Yeah, why am I talking about AI? Especially since, you know, it's something that everybody has spoken about and I think people are now moving beyond the AI conversation. Now, the reason why is because AI is here. AI is being adopted freely, but lots of people are just using it for content creation. They're creating videos, they're creating photos, they're creating text.
Some people are even using it to create podcasts. AI created podcasts. Now, I think that's a bad idea. I'll explain that later anyway. But for those of us who are trying to build businesses around our expertise, I really think it's a bad idea. I mean, the chief benefit of this podcast, me being here right now, is that you guys are listening to me live and in the flesh. And eventually you're going to see me on stage live and in the flesh.
What is the whole point of generating some AI avatar, spouting out some stuff, and then you guys are not even sure whether it's me or not or anyway, maybe I'll clarify my thought and then make another podcast episode about it. But for those of you who are trying to use AI avatars to make a podcast and to sell your consulting services, I mean, please, I really think you should stop that. The trip or the catch or the main thing is that when someone listens to a podcast and they think this is a correct guy or this is a sharp babe, The trip is that when you get in touch,
you actually speaking to someone who knows what's up, not that you're speaking to a bot. But then again, there are people who are building business models around that. You know, take all my thought, put it into an AI, pay clients a monthly access fee or something, and then they can chat with the bot and the bot is going to respond to everybody. Excuse me, Respond to everybody as if it were me. But anyway, let me not go.
Let me not stray too much. So the reason why I'm making today's episode, this is because people are using AI, but they're using it just for content creation, to create videos, create photos, you create texts. And the reason why people are doing that is so that they can get more clicks and more engagement. Because the thing with AI is that it makes content, it makes it easier to produce content and it makes it easier to produce high quality content.
And so in theory, the more of these things that you can crank out, the more clicks and the more engagement you are going to get. So that's what people are using AI for. Use AI, create content, get more clicks and get more engagement. Now I'm going to ask you very, very, I say on to thee. When you entered into business, did you enter into business just for clicks and engagement? The answer is a capital NO. If you are a greedy bastard like me, the reason why you got into business in the 1st place is because you want to make more money.
MMM, you want to make more money. The only way we can make more money is if we create customers from the engagement and from the online interaction. So the goal is not just the clicks and the engagement. Because The thing is, these AI tools are so wonderful that when you drop something, the engagement is absolutely fantastic. Live Case Study Offices is an NGO that is based in Abuja. I know the people behind the NGO. They have a LinkedIn account.
They came up with this video avatar where it's a young lady who was talking about motivational quotes. As in fine babe, very, very fine babe, as incorrect evil babe as even think it was a real babe. I was about to send the lady a message. That's the lady who owns the NGO. How far now? Who is this? Who's this Molly I'm seeing on your channel? So it's only when I read the text and I realized that, oh, OK, this thing is not is not even real as in his AI.
And the thing was on point, as in she looked real, she sounded real, she sounded Nigerian. As in, if not for the text, I would have assumed that it was real life babe. And man, that thing as in it took off. As in people were impressed, People commented me too. I commented, people shared. OK, did I share? I can't remember if I shared what? Commenting, sharing as in the post Plenty, plenty, plenty of engagement. Well then remember the question that I asked you when we started these businesses?
Are we easy for clicks and engagement? The answer is no. OK, since they are an NGO, well let's just say the only social impact. OK, then put it like that. So it's not for clicks and engagement for them, it's for social impact. For me, it's to make more money. But either way, we are trying to create customers from the engagement that we find online. Now it is my opinion that the best way that we should be using AI is for ideation that is coming up with ideas.
Number one, we should be coming up with ideas not for content per SE. Using AI for content is not bad, but the main thing we should be using AI for is for ideation and trying to figure out our ICP. That is our ideal customer profile or the ideal customer avatar or the ideal, you know, you get the point. We should be trying to use AI to figure out who is the ideal customer that we should be running after. The good thing about these AI
tools is that they're very good at doing data crunching. If you have to sit down and look at your invoices and look at your transaction history and stuff like that and put everything out on a sheet of paper, throw that information into char GPT and say char GPT, here are the demographic. Excuse me, here is the anonymous demographic information of people that I did business with in 2025. Run through it and give me characteristics of what you think my ideal customer profile should be.
If you send it and it sends you back, it is helping you to clarify your thoughts around who you should start chasing in 2026. Abby. OK, no, we're still in 2025, halfway through. So give you a better sense of who you should start chasing for the rest of the year. And when the new year rolls out in 2026, that is what you should be doing with RGBT. You need to figure out who is your ideal customer profile, who is the main person that you should be chasing?
Excuse me because lots of us are doing business with anybody who shows up, but we're not having a very prescriptive, very proactive approach of waking up in the morning and saying that you know what, my ICP should be men or women living in Abuja or Lagos of a certain age of a certain profession and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me come up with a plan for going after these kinds of people. That is the chief benefit.
That is the main thing they should be using AI to do to figure out your ICP. Because when you figure out who your ICP is, the next thing is using AI to try and figure out where are these people online or where are they offline, offline in the real world? Where can we find them online? Where can we find them now? It is only when we've gone through this exercise that we can now start putting out content to attract this ICP.
Let's go back to this NGO that I said created a very correct, fine looking IBO Babe, but the NGO was using the IBO Babe to share motivational content. I'll come back to that later. Just remember using that as a case study. So it's only if you've done all these mental work that you can now. So using AAI to create the kind of content that will attract these people. And even then, please, it is not about clicks and engagement.
It's not just about creating content that will attract people. You should be content around people's problems and around people's visions so that the people who have the problem or who have the vision that your product or service can help them achieve, they the content will resonate with them and they will actually have reason to call you because your content is not just wow. It's not just catching their attention, but it actually is talking about a problem that they're currently facing or that a vision that they are trying to achieve.
And they need some help getting there. And hopefully it is your product or your service that will help them achieve that vision. So that's online now offline, after we have used AI tools to figure out who the ICP is, the main, the main people that were supposed to be chasing after the best options where we can find people that are going to give us some good money. We now use AI to try and figure out where we can find these people.
Some of you will say, hi, are we going to use AI for everything? No, no, no, no, no, we're not. And to be honest, this kind of thought activity is what people used to do anyway before AI was invented. The problem is just that to do this kind of thought activity, usually your brain has to be fresh or you have to be in a good frame of mind. Or maybe like for those of you who and who used to be, because I used to be in business with my brother at some point and my brother-in-law, you know?
So if you want to brainstorm, this is the part where you call your brother and say, hey, bro alpha, you know, I've been thinking for this business to move to the promised land because I'm tired of soaking Gary in 2025, you know, on the site eating Sharma for breakfast. So for us to move forward in 2025 and beyond, I'm thinking we should be chasing these kind of people. What do you feel? Then your brother will say something and then your brother-in-law will say something.
You also discuss to mom. See moms, you say something. You also discuss your wife. Wife, you say something. If you're a woman, you know the other way around, you discuss your husband and husband say something. Discuss to popsi pops, you say something. So that's how we used to do ideation back in the day. But now with these tools and of course, if you're going to be in ideation the old way, you can see that something now take several days.
You call your brother today, call your brother-in-law tomorrow, call mom, see next tomorrow, call pop C next to next to next tomorrow. And then call your elder in church or in the mosque in the mosque next to next to next next to next tomorrow. You see that it takes a couple of days. But the key benefit of having these tools on hand is that we can do this research now. Shop, shop 2-3 hours, we are finished doing our research and then we'd even have much more promising conversations when we're talking to mumsy popsy business partners, other stakeholders or maybe even your your coach or your mentor will be a matter of this is what I
think. How do you think we can, how do you think we can execute on this to move to the next level or what do you think are the holes in this plan? I mean, that will be a much more fruitful conversation to have. Anyway, as I was saying, so I lost my train of thought. I just had somebody knock on my neighbor's door. So I lost my train of thought. I thought it was over here. So ideation, trying to figure out who your ideal customer is,
trying to figure out where and how to find them online. Now, the main thing that I keep saying again, take action because there's no point with coming up with beautiful plans that we are going to store on our phone and we do not take action on. So we should be taking action on these things. So you remember now I said that there's a live case study where I was on LinkedIn just scrolling aimlessly because you know, you know, once in a while your brain just switches off and you're scrolling social media aimlessly.
I won't like happens to me too, happens to everybody. So I was scrolling aimlessly now then I saw wow, correct looking babe, very yellow skin, very on points, very articulate. I was like that, who is this? Who is this Assam pity? Who is this as incorrect as in as No, no, no, she, she was, she was on point. And then me wanting to harass my friend, 'cause like I said, my friend was the NGO. I know some of our staff and I
know that this is not a member of our staff. So I need to just send a message to harass like who is this Finder that people have hired? Until I now saw the text and then the text said that this is AI generated. We generated it using this disease engine dot dot dot dot. And I was like, oh, OK, impressive. But remember this is an NGO. Then the thing that the AI avatar was even doing. That's correct. Babe define babe. The babe was now talking motivational quotes.
But remember I said that this company is a what is an NGO? How is it going to help you as an NGO that is built around stakeholder management and that is built around fundraising for people in the sustainable. Sorry, is this sustainable development? Sustainable development space? You know, SDGS, How is having a AI generated avatar? How is that helping you? How is that helping your business? How is that helping your cause?
How is that helping the business go for which you set up the NGO? Did you think get clicks plenty? Because I clicked on it, I saw Fine Babe. Do you think get engagement plenty? I engage with it because I saw Fine Babe and I'll surprise that Fine Babe was not even real. That was completely AI generated as in a talking video. The movement seemed real, the voice seemed very Nigerian, very real, as in it was impressive. By the end of the day, all that click order engagement, how is it now helping your NGO?
Let's pretend that is not an NGO, that was a business. Now, how is that kind of thing when they help the business? A lot of us are getting carried away with the capabilities that AI tools have to offer. And so because of that, we're creating bad as video, bad as audio, correct texts, correct everything without thinking about how this is going to serve the ultimate end, the ultimate goal of the business at the end of the day for someone in that space, an NGO around who has concerned about stakeholder management and fundraising for people who are devoted to SDG
sustainable development goals. So I know it sounds like a lot, but you know, that's how it is when all these people now well concerned about sustainability and environments, you know, they always use big, big, big, big, big words. And I keep telling them now, look, you want this thing to catch on. Stop using these big words because the average person doesn't know what is the what sustainable development goals, you know, means.
I mean, yes, in the ministerial briefing and everything, use all the big terms when it comes to communicating these things so that the average person can take action and so that our children in the schools can understand, use relatable words, whether that's, that's a story for another day. So this video avatar should have been talking about stakeholder management or should have been talking about fundraising opportunities for businesses and NGOs in the sustainable development space, sustainable development sector in Nigeria.
That is the kind of content that you should be making. You should be making content that would help you as a consultant or as an NGO find more clients, not just to get more clicks and not just to get more engagement. There was somebody I was trying to talk about this sort of thing. She didn't to see where I was coming from and she did one post and the post ended up going viral and she was very happy for about a month.
And then she released another post saying how going viral was a waste of time to her because she ended up acquiring audiences that were useless to her. And it's something I've been saying to people time and time again and they don't quite get the goal is not to blow. The goal is not to be viral. The goal is to attract the right kind of audience. So use this AI tools and trying to figure out who is the right audience that I should be targeting in the first place.
Who should I be targeting online? Who should I be targeting offline? What ideas I can be using to targeting these people. Sorry to target these people and to initiate conversations with them. That is the best way to use this AI tools or else you would just lose the plot. If not, be a matter of this AI company has released this AI tool. This AI tool allows you to create wonderful videos of of nature or whatever. Then you jump on the bandwagon and then all of you are making wonderful videos about nature.
If you cannot use those videos to help you target who your ideal customer should be, or initiate conversations or that kinds of engagement with who your ideal audience should be, you are just wasting your time. So that is how Nigerian businesses should be using AI in 2025. It's not about the clicks. It's not about the engagement. Use it to clarify your thinking. So now you don't have to call your brother. Call your brother-in-law.
Wait until mum sees free or wait until pop sees free to talk to you. And you don't have to drive 2 hours to go and see your mentor in town to discuss some of these things anymore. You can sit down sharply in your house in two or three hours. I'll come up with a bunch of good ideas so that by the time you're having a conversation with your business partners or with your parents or with your mentor, you have achieved, as in you have done, you have clarified plenty of your thinking.
You'll now be able to have much more productive conversations. In fact, it's something that I say a lot on the radio show, and I'm even going to say today when I get on the air, that nowadays in 2025, ideation is not the problem. Too many people reach out to me, I say. I don't have ideas, I don't have ideas. Let's come up with ideas. And I told her, look, if you have a coach or a consultant and you're using the coach or the consultant for ideation, you're just you're wasting your time.
You can sit down now and come up with a bunch of ideas on your own using these AI tools so that by the time you're having the conversation with your coach or with your mentor, you will are trying to figure out which of these ideas are most workable and how to actually go about implementing these ideas. Anyway, we've been 20 minutes so let me not stretch it too too long. But anyway, I hope I've been able to answer the question now.
This is how we're supposed to use AI to build the businesses that grows beyond clicks and beyond engagement. And by the way, it is frustrating. You should stop creating all these videos of very fine looking babes. You know, please only use real babes. Some of us are looking for a second wife. Putting AI babes on the Internet is not helping our ministry. Use real babes only. So that's all for today. Remember, if you have any sales and marketing questions, bring them to me.
You can call, you can SMS, you can WhatsApp me on 08064662140. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I will catch you next time. Same place in your headphones or in your speakers.