The AI Advantage: How Small Businesses Can Leverage AI for Growth

Hello and welcome to the show. Last week was SME Vcon and I think I spoke about it maybe two or three weeks back, you know, in the lead up to it, trying to let you guys know what my session was going to be about on how you can use artificial intelligence to improve your sales. So today's episode, I'm just going to do a brief recap of all the stuff that we spoke about, Well, that I spoke about doing the SME Vcon. The conference was a very, very long one.

I haven't seen one this long before because I've done a bunch of stuff before online or offline. But I'm used to an event being, you know, maybe a full day event, maybe 6-7 hours or something, you know, a few speakers, four or five. But SME Vcon was online and it was I think each day was 12 hours long. So we were speaking in circuits of about maybe one hour. And well, of course for the speaker, it's not a problem because you show in, you show up signing, do your bit, you know,

Q&A, maybe hang around one or two sessions and then leave. But then for people who would come and attend multiple sessions, I think that was quite the time investment. So it's nice to see that there are a bunch of you out there who are looking for information or the avenues that you can use to improve your business. So more power to you if you attended multiple sessions of the SME Vcon. So the reason why I'm making this podcast episode today is also share the good stuff that we discussed from my own point of view, I mean, during my own session.

So share that with you guys over here on the pod. Now before we do that listener, shout out to OK K Kasimir. When I was having a chat with the fellow, I told him that this is the weirdest Ebony I've come across because I know of the more Arabic Kashmir names. So apart from my OAU days, I know one Kashmir. I've spoken to a few Kashmirs but I've not come across and Igbo Kashmir. But then he told me that it's not Kashmir, it is Kasimir CASIMIR.

So OK. K Kasimir, most interesting Igbo name I've come across so far came across the podcast on Spotify. But later on I taught him how to use listen notes on YouTube so that we can use the make the podcast a good learning resource. That's for more if you're trying to use the podcast in a much more focused way. So Okke Kasimir is at on Twitter at CX, but the C is spelt CEE and then the X is Exx. So the C starts with a capital C

and then the X starts with a capital E. So you can find him on Twitter. So he's a web three artist. He's an animator and an architecture student and he's all about building Web 3 products, currently working on the Web 3 survey, a Web 3 survey tool. And we had an interesting chat about that when we, he reached out to me on, on WhatsApp. Yeah, our chat was on WhatsApp. So there's a podcast listener who's interested in fundraising,

Web 3 projects, fintech, investors, stakeholder management, all those sorts of things. So I had a conversation about how he can use the podcast in a very focused way to get information about all these sorts of things because we're currently at over 920 something episodes. So if you're new to the podcast and you want to find out the things that are put out on these sorts of things, it's it's going to be an uphill task to go through all these episodes just to fish for what it is that you want.

So I introduced OK K Casimir to listen notes, which is a catalogue or directory of pod all sorts of podcasts under the sun. So you can find everybody there, whether it's Brian Tracy or what's his name Robbins. I can't remember the guy's name, Rob something Robbins. My podcast is there even, I mean, oh, all kinds of podcasts are there. I mean Nigeria, Australia, UK, all kinds of podcasts, business, gossip, everything. It's all there.

And the unique thing about Listen Notes is it has a search function that allows you to search within a podcast. So you can go into Listen Notes, you can pull up my podcast and then you can tell Listen Notes that OK, out of all the podcast episodes that this young man has put out, out of the 920 episodes, 20 something episodes as young man has put out, give me the podcast episodes where he only spoke about Web 3. And Listen Notes is going to say give you the episodes where where I spoke about things related to Web 3.

So that is how you can use Listen Notes as a focused learning tool. Then Listen Notes also recommend that to people because if you take the paid version, then you're also going to be able to get transcripts on whatever it is you're looking for. So if you don't want to listen to the whole episode, you actually can pay Listen Notes and then have them transcribe those episodes. So it might be easier for you to, OK, let's say I've only done 3 episodes relating to Web 3.

Then if you look at it and I think, OK, he did 3 episodes, each episode is 30 minutes. If I want to listen to you, that's an hour, 30 minutes. How about I just pay for the transcripts and then I will be quicker to read 3 transcripts now to listen to three episodes. So you can do that as well. So yeah, we explore those ideas. But now that the podcast is available on YouTube, and yes, I've checked all 920 something episodes are available.

You can use the search bar on YouTube and then search within the podcast as well to get all the episodes that you need. So if you are someone in OK K Kashmir Kasimir's situation and you want to learn a bunch of stuff about fundraising, then yeah, go to YouTube. Just type in my name, Tavishima. Well, because Tavishima is shorter than typing in sales for the Nigerian business person. So you can just type in Tavishima and then type fundraising and then all the episodes that I've released on fundraising will be there.

The good thing if you use YouTube is my TikTok videos, I also put them up on YouTube and then my LinkedIn videos I also put them up on, sorry, not LinkedIn. I didn't do LinkedIn videos. I did Instagram. Instagram videos up on YouTube. So if you check YouTube, it's a larger catalog. If you're listening to the podcast, it's just 920. If you're going to YouTube, it's a catalogue of about 1200 or something. So there's more videos there.

So yeah, that's it. So shout out to OK K Kasimir, nice meeting you. Nice chatting with you. And I would love to meet and talk to more podcast listeners. It's always a joy when I come across you folks. So let's head straight to SME Vcon 2024. Good news is the people who organized the program or so happy with my session that I'm going to have me back for SME VCON 2025. And for those of you who attended the event and we had fun and you enjoyed my session,

good news is I'm going to be back with you guys again next year. So before we did the SME Vcon itself, there was a teaser session where with Doctor Ojugo Oji Hugo was the convener. Was it convener or organizer or however it is that you call it? And in the teaser session, we spoke about a couple of things. And I was keen to point out that AI is just computerized problem solving because you still have a bunch of people running around saying that AI is about creating computers to be like human beings.

Now, are computers functioning or starting to mimic human behaviour? It's, it's more of an what's the word and after effect. Yeah, let's say it's more of an after effect, after effect or an accident. But the main thing is that AI is just using computers to solve problems. Even if AI is about, look, bottom line is this AI is here to stay. Trying to run around with doomsday scenarios is not going to help you realize that this thing is a tool.

Figure out how this tool applies to whatever it is that you're trying to do. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming that you're trying to grow your business. Just figure out how to use this thing to grow your business. End of story, full stop. If you think that there are larger social implications, then do your best as a man, as a woman, as a family person or whatever to inoculate yourself or inoculate your family or whatever it is that you think needs to be done or to prepare for these doomsday scenarios that you're considering.

But in the meantime, AI is here to stay. You can't do anything about it. AI is just computer solving problems. So please take it and adopt it as such. Then in the teaser session, I said that everybody, business people, Nigeria business people should all use AI because it's good for ideation. Coming up with ideas is good for strategy, trying to figure out which way should we should go. And it's good for execution because in the old days, if I

wanted to do ideation, I would call up my brother and say hey bro, what's up? How you been? How are the kids? I've been thinking about this, this, this, this, this Abhi, how do you see it? And now I hear what he has to say. Then after that, I'll call my mom and then I'll talk to my wife and then I'll call one or two other people that process those, that process of phone calling back and forth and everything. I mean, that process can easily be a week or two weeks.

You know, you call your homies up, you call your brother, you talk to your wife, you talk to one or two people, you know. So we'll take a very long time. But with AI now we can do the ideation thing. Sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp. 2-3 hours, you know, you come up with the prompts running through AI, you see a bunch of ideas, some things make sense, some things don't make sense. You know you reason it. Do some follow up prompts, you get a good call of ideas that you think are workable.

And because you've done this thing fast, do using one or two hours to come up with a bunch of ideas, execution also is faster. So these are the main reasons why I say that Nigerian business people should be using AI. Use it for ideation, use it for strategy. And because these things are fast, execution is also going to be sharp. Sharp. Then I also said we should all use AI because these things are free and affordable.

I only talk about LLMS or GPTSLLMS, large language models. So these are AIS that try to work or try to do their work by human beings. Feeding text into it, putting information in text form or putting prompts in text form to get a response. And then GPTS generative pre trained Transformers. So that is the AI is there, it has a large data set, you give it a prompt and then it tries to give you an answer. Now GPTS are not new, they have always been here.

The Google algorithm is a GPT. It is just that it used to give you the response in in a in a list ranking. So you give it a question and it now gives you information back page one, number one, blah blah blah, blah blah page two, number one, blah blah blah, page three, number one, blah, blah blah. But the Google algorithm is a GPT. So it's just the new thing is just the chat ChatGPT. So now GPTS can now give you responses with text.

So in the old days, Google would say Page 1 to page 10, number one to number 10 on each page. But now Google Gemini will give you an answer and say here are the best pizza whatever, whatever, whatever closest to you. This one is 5 kilometers away. This one is 10 kilometers away. If you prefer chicken, try this one. If you prefer fish on your pizza, try this one. You know, so now it just gives it to you as a chat. So GPTS have always been here.

It's nothing new. But now the talk back to us or they text back to us. So I only focus on LLMS and GPTS because believe me, the field of AI is really, really vast. Because I'm currently I currently have a mentee at the University of Aberdeen. He's an engineering undergrad. University of Aberdeen is my alma mater. That's why I did my post my post grad so and he's an engineer undergrad and I was talking to him about AI and my guy just started talking about all kinds of protocols and this and this and that and that.

And look at how to bring like calm him down. Like, look, dude, I asked about AI. It's not as if me, I'm a pro. All I know is Gemini ChatGPT and you know, small stuff that we, we, we mortals use. But like, man, you guys are advanced. So yeah, AI it's vast. There's plenty that is going on, but I only talk about NLMS and GPTS and the reason why it's because they're already on your phone. If you bought your Google, If you bought your Google phone,

your Android phone in 2024 or in 2023, Gemini is already installed on your phone, so no need to look for it. If you bought your Mac computer in 2024 or you bought it in later half of 2023, then ChatGPT has already been incorporated into it. If you have Apple products like iPhone, I think it's copilot that is already on it. But I'm just trying to say that I focus on these ones because they're free, they're affordable, they're easy to access.

Even if you have an old phone or an old computer, looking for the thing to download is not a problem. But if you have new gear, if you bought your phone last week, I'm telling you that The thing is already on your phone. So just whip it up. No excuse, just start using. So that's why I focus on LLM and GPTS easy to use. Everybody already has them. Then let's see what else. I think that's what we handle in the teaser session.

But then for the main session, now that was an adventure in itself because you guys know, for those of you who are in Nigeria, you guys know how things have been now, as in fuel in the country and all that. So Mumsy came to visit and she confirmed that in Makudi in Benway State like fuel is something else like trying to find it Wahala, you find it the cost wahala. So same thing in Abuja. So excuse me. So same thing in Abuja finding fuel has been like rough.

So the deal of the session now filling stations around start to sell. The queues just become massive. And I was thinking about it like or more should I wait for this SMEV con because my own session was 330. Should I wait this thing out and then try it tomorrow? I just thought about it like you never know, the fuel is here today. Tomorrow it might not be here. So, so let me just fill up. So I went to go and join the fuel queue.

I figured, you know, sharp, sharp, you know, maybe one or two hours I'll be gone or more. That's how I now wait. That's how I now got trapped in the fuel queue. Like the time was getting close to 330, getting close to 3:30. I was like, how will I do this thing now? I was hoping that I'll be able to buy fuel and then rush back home in time so that I because my notes were at home, I didn't bring my notes. But as the time was going on, I

just realized that Omar, I can't make this SMAV con anymore as I can't go home to do this thing like I have to run this thing in the fuel queue. I was running like that. I didn't I didn't bring my notes. Was that well, no problem. I remember Shah because, you know, it's my own specialty. So no, I'll I'll remember about everything I need to talk about. So the thing now was just to make sure that I buy fuel by that 3 3:30 as I was getting closer to like 315 three 20s.

This one mumsy one Mama, she was able to get into the filling station through one of the you know how people smuggle themselves in. She smuggled herself. She now reversed and now blocked one lane on the left. Then one idiot Mallow guy was able to do the same thing and weaved his way in and he now reversed and then blocked the lane by the right. That's how all of us were now pinned inside. And then you know, the normal thing now everybody shouting blah, blah, blah, you're destroying Nigeria act your age,

you know, move, let us pass everything. Absolute chaos. I said what kind of rubbish is this? I was now pinned inside this thing and it was by the time you think reached like 325I said I just pulled out my phone. I called Doctor Odugo, she didn't answer. She responded no, I'm in a session. So I sent her a message. Doctor Ojugo I beg, I beg this thing can we do 4:00? She said OK no problem that this my mother is even speaking now she's running over time.

So I said OK fine no problem. I just messaged her. I said OK, no problem like don't force her to stop because it's not as if me I'm ready to come live like allow her. So Doctor Ojugo said OK no problem we'll allow her to run 20 minutes. I said OK over around 20 minutes. So I said OK, no problem, that gives me 350. I was hoping I would have bought by 3:50, but guys, lo and behold by 340 something I still had not bought because Mama had Pinnos in on the left and then my little guy had Pinnos in on the right.

So no, no way to move. Eventually they moved above my fuel and I entered into the car. I wanted to drive front small, you know, I park somewhere quiet and then have my own session. But as I was peeling away, that's when Doctor Ojugo was now introducing me like, oh, our next speaker. Something, something, something, something. I said more it don't happen. So I just parked right in front of well, not in front of the gate hasn't appealed to the right and then parked there.

And yeah, that's it. I just went live just like that, guys. I won't lie, like I'm usually cool under pressure and this time I was cool under pressure. I must admit, I, I like the way I handled the situation. I handled it smoothly, but I just the same thing I do on the podcast. You know when I apologize to you guys that there's going to be noise in the background. I just told them that, hey, look, sorry guys, microphone is not here and it's going to be very, very noisy because I had a few things to attend to.

So I wasn't able to get home back to my workspace. So I'm going to be handling this session from my car. And of course, Dr. Ojugo said not a problem. Everybody said not a problem. And then we started. And of course it helps that my own set, my own style is usually interactive. I like to ask questions. I like to pull people up on stage as well. Use other people as, as a, what do you call it as a Guinea pig? Because it's one thing to go and start talking sales, business growth and be talking fury,

fury, fury. I want people to see that this thing is practical, practical, practical. So I call somebody up. What is your business? What are you trying to do? What is the challenge? OK, so with AI, this is how we'll tackle it. This is how we'll solve it. We'll do it like this, we'll do it like this so that people will learn. And then of course, it yielded fruit because even people who got in touch with me after the session said that they learnt practical things that they would do immediately.

To grow their businesses. In fact, there's one lady in particular who, funny enough, also is at the University of Aberdeen currently doing her studies. She said that some of the things that I said were going to help her in her academic research and that she was also going to do to improve her business. In fact, she said she was going to do it that night because I was telling people like, OK, we've gone late, it's been a long day.

All these things. I'm telling you guys, if any of you reaches out, I want to hear Monday morning that this is what I did. She says, hey man, that this is good. It's gold. I'm doing it tonight for the business. So it turned out to be a wonderful session, even though I was outside the noisy filling station with people shouting, quarreling, tankers driving in out, people dashing in out area, boys trying to extort collect money, everything.

And and it was fun. It turned out to be a wonderful session and still got high reviews regardless of all the extra stuff. So that was just my adventure and I guess the main learnings I took away from it is this. By the time I got home and I was giving my wife the gist, my wife was like yourself, you're the one that caused it. And I had to admit like yes, yes, it was my fault. It was my fault. She said, I told you you're cutting this thing close.

And I admit it was my fault. And now I know I am never cutting things this close again. It is better to just say, OK, the fuel is here, but I've committed to SME Vcon. So let me just make them my give them my undivided attention, give them my make them a priority and let me flashy feel for today. Tomorrow I'll wake up and I'll see how I can organize feel. So yeah, yeah, it was my fault. I cut it close. And for you guys, I would recommend don't cut it close because it doesn't always work out.

There are times when I'll pull these kind of moves and it has worked out. I go, I do this thing sharp, sharp. I still make it back in time for the event one hour before because typically that's what I plan for in Abuja. I plan to be ready for the event an hour before. Back when I was in Lagos, I can't remember how long I would prepare because in Lagos traffic is mad. So you actually can't plan to be there in Lagos if the event is 10:00 and you plan to be there for your giving yourself like OK, let me be there for 9.

You never know because you might start off and then trailer will now come and block the road. You know, Walhalla, you end up being late. So in Lagos, I give more time, but in Abuja, yeah, I plan to be available an hour before. OK, so let me just do a rough sketch about what we spoke about. OK, well, let's see. You know what? I can't remember the order in which we spoke about these things because I didn't have my notes with me at the time.

So I was running through my presentation from memory and in a different order. But I have the notes about what I intended to talk about and in the order I intended to talk about it. So initially I wanted us to talk about what was AI. That part was already done. I told them that look, AI is just computer solving problems. So for the purpose of my session, I said ignore all the other fancy definitions. Just think of AI as computer solving problems because no matter the use case that we're looking at, you see that AI is just solving a problem.

So for people who use AI for pattern recognition, because you're trying to prevent cancer, you know, you show AIA bunch of pictures and it figures out this one is cancer, this one is benign and you know, or what not, that is just computers solving problems. For those people who use AI for agricultural purposes, when is it going to rain? When is it not going to rain? When should I harvest? When should I not harvest? When should I plant?

Where should I plant? All those sorts of things using AI pattern recognition drone technology, Where are the pests? Where are the pests going to be? All these sorts of things. It is just using computers to solve problems. Even if you want to create landing page and you don't know how to code and you want to use the AI to create your landing page or website, it is just computers solving problems. So that's why I told them,

forget all the fancy definitions. Is it computer program, algorithm, whatever. Is it trying to solve a problem? OK, good, that's AI problem done. Then the second question that I wanted to tackle was how do you increase sales? And then the third question was how can you use AI to help you execute on that? So those are the main questions and the thought process that I ran them through was if you want to increase sales, basically you just need deliberate steps when it comes to sales and marketing motions.

Because there are some people who want to increase sales, but who tried this tactic today, who tried this tactic tomorrow. And that is is not the best approach. You actually need to sit down and come up with something coherent and deliberate, well thought out, you know, come up with a plan and that plan has to involve prospecting, which is running out to look for people who might be interested in your product or your service.

It involves having conversations with people where you analyse, where you do need analysis. You know, who is this person, what's the problem, What are they trying to solve? Can my product or my service actually even help them? Then there's a stage where you have a proposal or a presentation. You say, OK, Olga, Madam, based on what I've heard, this is how we can help you achieve this is how we can help you achieve that.

If you buy my soap, it will help you, It will help your natural colour to come out, blah, blah, blah. If you buy my this, this, this, it will help you stop snoring. You know, So that's proposal stage. Then you need to learn how to close, get people to take action. And then there's also the parts afterwards, after you collect the money. That's the customer satisfaction, customer success, those functions of the business,

customer service because we want to make sure everybody's happy. And the reason why those are important is because it allows us to get repeat business. It allows us to get referrals, allows us to get testimonials. And those are important because it helps more people come back into the pipeline. So bottom line is I tried to tell them that this is what we need to do for trying to grow our sales. We need to be deliberate about these sales motions and about these marketing motions,

although for the purpose of time, because we only had one hour and I had already seeded 30 minutes of my session to somebody else. So really we only had about 45 minutes from my own session because I need to do question and answer maybe 1515 minutes. So my focus was on prospecting and having conversations with people and that was where I pulled people up on stage basically. OK, this is your business. What are you involved in?

How are we going to do prospecting? How are we going to get ideas for prospecting? How do we figure out who our ideal customer profile is and stuff like that. So the lady that I used was, well, I can't remember her name, Igbo lady, I can't remember her name, but she is a caterer, a chef in Abuja business channels, Instagram, WhatsApp, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook. And, and I'm really glad I called her because you know,

she's not just a caterer like any other caterer, a chef like any other chef. But she caters to people who have, what's that word, A special, I can't remember the word, but people who have basically people who have special dietary concerns. So the aged, people with diabetes, people who have allergies, you know, stuff like that. So I was just incredibly lucky that she was the first person on the screen. And I pulled up and yeah, I was incredibly lucky that I had such a wonderful case to work with.

So we're able to use Gemini and I did my screen share and we're able to run through Gemini and go through a couple of prompts and exercises to show how we can identify who the ICP for her business is. The ICP is the ideal customer profile, whoever you're supposed to be chasing after. Yeah. So that's the ICP. So we ran through it and then we came up with, you know, some really, really interesting ideas for who she could chase after.

And you see that during my sessions. This is the reason why I don't come with Slide or PowerPoint or whatever because I'm coming here. I'm trying to get you guys to understand something and live and on the spot. I'm trying to use people who are here as a case study to show you guys that this is how we execute on ABC and 123, which is the reason why people can say that, oh, I saw something. I heard something that I can do this night or I can do Monday morning to move my business forward because I did this thing live and we showed how.

If you are a specialty chef or a specialty caterer, how you can use ChatGPT to figure out new categories of people that you should be chasing after that you might be able to get business from there. So was very, very, very applicable, very, very practical. And people saw this thing live because I did screen share. So I walked people through the anatomy of a prompt. How are you supposed to prompt? How are you supposed to build a prompt?

And we prompted AI and we got a bunch of ideas for who was supposed to chase. But because of time, I now didn't go into the whole thing about how you use specific sales tactics and motions to start chasing after these people and things like that. But main thing is using this specialty caterer who is dealing with people who have special dietary concerns, special needs when it comes to food. And I'm really, really lucky that, yeah, was such a wonderful and unique example that we could use.

So, yeah. So we used to have basically figure out how to validate the figure out who your ideal customer profile is. Then for the second fellow, second fellow, what business was in? Forgive me, this is over a week ago. And since my material was not with me, usually I take notes during these things. But since my material was not with me, I was outside the filling station, I didn't make any notes. That's the reason why I can't remember names and businesses.

For the second fellow, the focus was on how the kind of conversations that we need to have because the average Nigerian business person just thinks it's all about personality and it's all about flow. Like you know, you package yourself well, I look good, my skin is correct, my accent is on point, my suit is whatever, you know, I have iPhone 18, you know, my packaging is on point. So I will go there, I'll have a conversation, Everything will be fine.

So I had to let them know that it's not like that. Yeah. Packaging is good. And please package yourself to the NTH degree, as in, make sure that everything on point, shoe on point, accent on point, phone on point, you know, everything on point. If you need to borrow your brother's Mercedes-Benz, no problem. Borrow it. Everything on point, you know? Yeah. So trick yourself out, do the whole thing. But when it comes to the conversation, we need to be going there with a plan.

What am I going to say? In what order will I say it when we're having conversations? What are the important things that I need to hit in my in in the conversation? These are some of the things that are make or break because packaging can be on points. And then you go there where your conversation is all over the place and they will say correct girl or correct guy, but they will end up doing business with you. And this is the reason why it was because your conversations were meandering.

They were not. They were not on point. So I told them about how from a sales and business development perspective, our conversations need to be qualification conversations. And what's the other word, convocation, I'm sorry, qualification and discovery. Qualification and discovery. So we're trying to do needs analysis. We're trying to figure out who this person is, what this person is about, what is it that they need, What problem are they facing?

How bad is the problem? So back to this cream thing, the cream thing, if you sell cream, you know, pop or cream, pop or cream, what else? Carrot cream, you know, all these cream, that bleaching cream, although I've been told that not all of them is bleaching. Some of them is just toning. That bleaching is when you want to become yellow and that toning is when you you want your natural colour to come out. So OK, no problem.

So back to the cream thing. It's not just enough that you show up with your skin looking nice and yellow and your point, your your suit looking on point and then you have the iPhone 20, whatever. So that's not just enough. You also need to be able to engage with the conversation with this woman that you haven't that you're meeting with face to face. You need to figure out about her, some stuff about her personal history, what it is that she's trying to achieve.

Is it toning or is it bleaching she's trying to achieve? What other skin problems does she have? What is her skin type? Is it dry? Is it oily? Is it mixed? Because I hear that there's some people that have mixed skin that if you check their face, the face is dry. But then if you check their stomach, stomach is oily. And then if you check bom bom, you know, bom bom is dry or something. So these are the kind of conversations you need to have because this is what will make you be able to have an effective proposal or presentation.

When you now know every, every about this woman and about her skin problems and her challenges, you will now be able to say, oh, Madam, normally you, I would have proposed carrot soap for you, but based on what we've discussed, you don't need this carrot thing yet. What you need is sheer butter soap. What you need is this kind of soap, bitter leaf soap or whatever, which will work on this and this and this aspect of your skin and will help you repair this, repair this and do this and do this.

After we do this regimen for a purpose for for like 8 months and we now restore your skin to something, something pH, then we can now go to purple soap and carrot soap. So you see that this is how you now close the sale. The conversation that you're having, there's certain things that you need to be hitting in the conversation to figure out about the person and to figure out about the problem that they're facing. And with that, you now know how to make an effective presentation.

Now, how AI comes into this is especially if you're new into the business, sometimes you don't know what kind of question to ask. And believe me, I've been in that situation before in Nigeria, we have this thing in law because I started off in my professional background, was in law, my first degree. Unfortunately, it's a tradition. It used to be a tradition. I don't know if they continue where yoga in the law firm would just put you in one situation like that and just remove himself and then you're on your own.

The problem is yoga will not tell you when this thing is supposed to happen. You just show up. You're supposed to meet with Alhaji. So, so, so and you're there at the meeting and then your guy says, oh, sorry, Alhaji, I have to do so, so, so and so and so and so, but my junior colleague is here, Tavi Schumer. Tavi Schumer will handle the meeting and then your guy will not stand up and leave. And then you're thinking like,

like, what kind of madness is this? So anyway, it happens a lot in in the legal used to happen in legal profession. I don't know if people still do that thing now. If it happened to me in Court One day, you know, I went to cope with my Olga and then, you know, before you know it, my, my, my old girl. What did he even do himself? I can't remember if he left, but sharp, I was the one who was standing up and I was the one who had to make the motion and was really, really scary.

So there are these situations where you're face to face with the client or potential customer and you have no idea. Like, how am I supposed to carry out this conversation? No, ChatGPT is usually is a Gemini and all these tools are very, very helpful because you can run a small prompt before the meeting saying that I'm supposed to meet with Alhaji. So so, so and so Alhaji is in this business, blah, blah, blah. I'm a new first time lawyer.

I haven't handled any cases. What kind of questions and what kind of issues should we be discussing about in this meeting so that it's a productive meeting and I can help solve Alhaji so so and so's problem. And then you see it sent and ChatGPT will say, OK, based on everything you've said so far, Al Haji, so so and so is involved in these sorts of businesses. You, you're a lawyer. So from the legal end, you should be asking questions about 123456 about Al Haji's business.

You should be asking questions about ABC and blah, blah, blah. And just in case ask questions about this and this and that. So you can see now that if you're going into this meeting, having used AI to come up with some conversation points, likely issues to anticipate, you know, things like that for your needs analysis stage, for your qualification and discovery stage, you can see that you have a fruitful conversation because you go there and you say, oh,

Alhaji, nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah. You know, small talk everything. How is business? How is the family? And then you'll be able to go through and start having constructive conversations that OK, Alhaji, because you're involved in so, so, so and so my guess is that you do this, you do this, you do that. Is that correct? Alhaji will say, Oh yes, actually it's correct. As a matter of fact, not only is this one correct, but this is where we've been having this problem on this, this problem on that.

Because you've done some research on Gemini ahead of time, you have an idea of an also also because you are the professional and I always point this out to everybody, we cannot allow charge EPT to do the thinking for us. We have to be the subject matter expert. If you do not know your law, if you did not go to uni and pass very well and study and you're expecting charity to think for you, you will go there without meeting Al Haji and you will just embarrass yourself.

You show that you're asking questions that are irrelevant. But if you are the subject matter expert, you did your studying, you know well, you passed your whatever, well, you take your legal career seriously, you'll be able to know that, OK, even though ChatGPT recommended questions on 456, because you're the subject matter professional, you will know that, OK, questions 4-5 and six do not apply. Let me not ask it, but instead let me drill down on questions 1-2 and three.

So this is how you can use ChatGPT Gemini. What else? All the different tools there to make sure that you have good conversation points heading into these meetings. So that was what I did with the second person's business. After that, we wrapped it up so we could do some question and answer people. I think there was only just one question. So the rest of it was me just pulling people up on stage saying, OK, so based on what we've discussed so far, how are you going to apply this to your business?

And then they'll say this and I say, OK, yeah, no problem, that works, but then tweak it. Try this instead. Try that instead. And that's how we rolled out the session and everybody had fun and I got the digital equivalent of a standing ovation, which was really, really nice. But I am never going to do this again. I'll never cut things this close again. And I'm glad that everything ended up well. Which also goes to show why you should be the subject matter expert of what it is that you do.

If you take your craft seriously and you try to be the subject matter expert, then you can handle all kinds of things that come your way. When I was in Kano, because that's why I did my NYSE, my friend was a medical doctor, one of these, she was one of these very, very brainy types. And she ended up being in charge of the hospital. And one day I came to come and see her and say what's up? And that day they just happened to be emergency after emergency.

And I was impressed seeing how this babe was just doing triage. As in life and in the field, you know, things that you normally have to wheel somebody into surgery, but it looks like this person is going to die now. The way she handled herself, cool, calm, under pressure. So all the emergencies that day, nobody died. There was not enough time to wheel people into surgery. She was even able to patch up 1 old man Sharp Sharp, who came up with a catheter and so that the family could take him to the bigger hospital in town.

And later on, she admitted that she was really, really, really nervous because it was overwhelming. Like she didn't have to deal with those sorts of like she had never been in that situation where you bring somebody in, it looks like this person is close to death. You bring another person, this person is like another complication, you know, like four or five. And then it didn't help that I was also there when all these things happened.

But because she was the expert, she turned out to be fine. So subject matter expertise, very, very, very important. So you guys should be paying attention to that. Whether you're a medical doctor, whether you're a lawyer, or whether you sell beauty products, you have to be the subject matter expert. It has a great deal of it, tells a great deal on how we conduct our businesses. So we're close to 45 minutes. Let me just bring this episode to a close.

That is how SME Vcon 2024 turned out. SME 20. SME Vcon 2025 is also going to be great, and if you're going to attend that session, don't worry, I'm not going to be in a filling station. I will be at my desk, everything will be nice and cool. I'll be all miked up and we'll have a wonderful session, but my approach is still going to be the same. If you're there at any of my sessions, I'm going to be calling people up from the stage.

The way that I do this thing is if we're live and on stage, I just pick whoever catches my fancy. So try not to look too handsome or too beautiful on that day. If you look extremely beautiful, I'm going to call you up. If you look extremely handsome and well together, I'm going to pull you up. Even if you don't look handsome or beautiful, but you look kind of interesting, I will pull you up. If it's going to be an online session, I just start with whoever's name is on top of the screen and then I work my way down.

So if your name starts with a A, then most likely you're going to be called because your name is going to be top on the screen, I think. I'm not sure if it's depends on people's names or depends on who signs in first. So, yeah, so that those are things to expect. Then if it's going to be a smaller engagement where your guy calls me in to work with your company and you guys are a small company, then best believe I'm going to call every single one of you.

So if it's a team of maybe four or five people, then whether you like to talk or whether you don't like to talk, so long as we're there, we're live and it's me, I'm going to call everybody. So you all are going to answer questions and we all are going to come up with ways for how these theories and these ideas we're discussing how we can use it practically now, now, now or tomorrow morning, 8:00 AM when we resume work to move the business forward or to solve these particular problems.

So looking forward to meeting you guys. Shout out to OK K Kasimir, let's see what else. Thanks for reaching out. Look forward to hearing from you guys more. For those of you who intend so, I attend any of my events, virtual, physical, These are the sorts of things to expect. So connect with me on WhatsApp, the phone number is 08064662140 and the country code is +234. Then connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the best social network for career business development,

personal development, all those sorts of things. The name to search for is Tave Shima aide. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the correct spelling of my name from the link where listening to this episode. So if you're listening to this thing on YouTube, if you just tap up to to the profile, you see the correct spelling of my name there so you can search for the right person. So thank you very much for your time and attention.

Oh, I'm sorry for the long episode. Just because I had to give you guys the the gist. The background story above my James Bond moves before SME Vcon. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.