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Monetize Your Expertise: The Digital Twin Playbook with Stephanie Sylvestre · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: So so now you have all these experts out there and God knows what that you could personally tap into if you want.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, right?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you created these agents for them.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got like the most unbelievable board of directors that one could possibly ever have, it sounds like.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Eric had something else that he had to do.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, but fortunately, I've got a really good guest here with us today, Stephanie Sylvester.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I was reading over Stephanie's background, and it's you've done a lot of different things, Steph.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she is calling in today, also from Cape Town, South Africa, which is very interesting.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Stephanie, tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Where did you grow up and how'd you get into what you're doing now?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I grew up in Belize, and um I came to the US to go to um to school, and I was going back to to um Belize.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: There was an election that happened like about two months before I was supposed to graduate, and um I then decamped to Miami to just wait out the election.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, if you've ever been to Miami in your 20s, it's kind of hard to just kind of hang out there and then when it's time to leave, just leave.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: So here I am still living in Miami, and um I'm I'm in Cape Town right now because we're looking to expand to South Africa and just trying to understand what it means to expand our business to South Africa and just get a feel for what it's like to live in in Cape Town.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: So Belize, it's interesting, you know.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um I live here in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and we have so many people from our university where I teach going and moving to Belize.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: What is that?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um it seems like there's a real uh phenomenon with many US uh folks moving to Belize right now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I think that um Belize has this thing where you can retire there and it's supposedly cheaper.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it's cheaper than Fayetteville, Arkansas.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's expensive.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's expensive here, believe it or not.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: This is the the hub of uh Walmart and all the companies that support Walmart.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we even have$2,000 a square foot condos in downtown Bentonville now.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's gone insane.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's insane, yeah.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: So lower cost of living, but but evidently Belize is a really nice place to live, um, from what I hear.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's a it's a good place.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's um uh it it has some of the qualities of the South, some of the foods the same.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I can see why people would want to go down there.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyway, you got out of school, stayed in Miami, and what was your educational background?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: What did you do, and what did you do next?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I have a master's in economic development and Latin American Studies, and then I got an internship by Shuly Packard, and um I met this guy that was one of the original people that wrote Unix.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: And if you don't know anything about computers, just know that computers are run on Unix, and if you have a Unix machine, it never goes down, unlike the other machines that we have today.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so he was kind of bored, and um from there I basically um learned computers and I worked my way up to CIO at a local government entity in Miami, and we were ready for COVID.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I was probably one of the few CIOs around the world that was ready for COVID, so I got to spend the time making a case for why we want to continue funding programs and not stop funding programs even though they can't provide services during COVID.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was a very, very interesting time.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I left, did a stint at Harvard, and um here we are.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um, me and my my my AI startup with um a team of incredible people.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, tell me about this AI startup now.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is your business called again?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's called Avatar Buddy, and it's a concept of everybody needs a buddy, and um we can help create AI agents that can be your buddy so you can be practice um um so you can practice um spending more time with humans, help you optimize, uh, help you optimize uh so that you can get work done quicker.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: Our goal is that um you become more productive, and because you're more productive, you're able to spend time with friends and family.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's what we want you to do.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, obviously some people are gonna be like, I can do more work, not necessarily the direction we wanted to go.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, how does this work?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: I know this is a SaaS company, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: You you have a subscription-based um revenue model.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, but but it's I don't know that there's a term for our technology how we are deploying our technology, and you know, it can it's kind of like different to new, and people like people have a hard time with something that's new.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: You're always like, is it like and I'm like, no, it's not, but what we do is um it's cloud-based.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we charge um for the agents, so we have a flat fee uh where you start at, and then each additional agent after that um we charge for.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_03: You could have as many users as you want, and we don't charge for tokens.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because if you charge for tokens, then you have to have an addictive solution to make money.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_03: If you charge by number of users, then um you're you price out some people that would otherwise be able to afford your product.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: So we're agent, and then that that means that we have to bring impact to you.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: We don't bring impact to you, you're like, I don't want to use you anymore because I don't see that the the purpose of investing in you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: So would an individual ever consider doing this, or is it always deployed on a company-wide basis?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, individuals can can do this if they are consultants, um executive coach, and and they want to multiply themselves, expand their reach, they want to be accessible 24-7.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: And then there are other individuals that might want to do it because they want to preserve their legacy.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us more about how this works.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was a management consultant for most of my career, so I understand what that's about.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so so you you're a management consultant, and you're everybody wants you on their project because you have the you have that little secret sauce, the nuance, the the be able to go in and very quickly assess, come up with brilliant ideas, help your company and the the cut clients um make lots of money.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then we they say, Mark, we're gonna put you into management and you have to train all these people, and then you keep training these people, and they can't seem to get it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: So what we do is we take all of your whys and we put it into a data vault, and then we configure the AI to work the way you work.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: And as we're configuring the AI to work the way you work, we might add your personality to the AI as well.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_03: So now when you want to do some work, or your customers want to, your clients want to do some work, or your junior person that you're training to build out your team, they could go ask the AI agent, and it's about 80, 85% accurate.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna say it's 100% accurate, because nothing is 100% accurate, but 80-85% accurate, and then you are now able to expand your reach.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't have to cut into your billable hours training the young people, they can get trained with the AI.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so you're increasing your billable hours, you don't have to worry about cutting into your hours shopping for fancy hats because your AI is their answer in the questions.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: That is really awesome.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we had it's Y Group.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I know for a number of years they worked on some sort of an AI product that was going to be called Question Mark, and where people could ask me questions.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I have so much writing that I mean, there's just so much writing that I've done that they can use all that in their in their database.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: But so, you know, I've been writing a newsletter now for like 36 years that's widely read in my industry.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: Comes out weekly.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: But so what if somebody isn't like me?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: What if they don't have all that content out there that you can grab up and refer to?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: What if I'm just Joe Blow, entrepreneur, uh, real estate developer trying to, you know, train my team in how I think, and I have basically no content out there for you to grab.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get that into your system?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: How do you figure out like how I would respond to questions or you know, I I'm curious about that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so the first thing that we do is we give you a personality questionnaire to complete so we can digitize your personality.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: Then we do a life history and we have you walk through your life 10 decades at a time, and as you're walking through your life 10 decades at a time, we start jotting down key things that are important that shape who you are.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Then we circle back around to those key points and we drill into those key points, and then we come back around again and we keep doing that, and then um if if I mean for the people that are creating a digital twin, they they have a body of work, it might not be neatly organized, but they have a body of work, and you have to add that.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're not gonna add somebody that doesn't have a body of work as a mentor because the whole point is to employ inspire and encourage other people, right?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have anything to inspire and encourage them with.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of hard.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that's interesting.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um people that have legacy to leave.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead, go ahead.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: So this is more of a tool for mentoring than it is something that a client would um be tapping into.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what you're telling me?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's but think about mentoring, not the way you normally think about mentoring, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: It could be mentoring a client, I guess.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, you're thinking about mentoring.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you want to think about mentoring um from the perspective of um whenever you help somebody, you're mentoring them.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Whenever you coach somebody, you're mentoring them.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Whenever somebody comes to you um to help them with their work, you're mentoring them.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's kind of like what you want to think about it from that perspective.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: So the AI is helping you be better.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't I don't know how to be a management consultant.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: I go talk to um the AI that's fashioned after how Mark is a mark, does his management consultant.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: There's techniques that you use.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: I I I used to do boutique consulting, so I know what you're talking about.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: There's ways that you can move around very quickly and find the the answers and and figure out what's what's wrong, ask the right questions right so the AI can help you think through those things.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like there's a lot of intense work for you guys to sort of set up the the agent to be the digital twin.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is that is that the case, or do you have that automated in a way to gather all that information?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's it's it's not intense.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um what we do is we have have you um answer the question, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the way we interview you is we just either we'll have a session like how we were having a session, record it, or we would say, Hey, uh Mark, you know, talk to your grandkid or some person to have them interview you because just doing stream of consciousness is difficult.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then while they're sitting there, they're just you know, iPhone or um Android has recording capabilities, and then for I know for iPhone, you just click on the the recording and you just get the transcript and we give the AI the transcript.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: We don't even edit the transcript, and when we don't edit the transcript, then the AI really gets the tone of how you talk, how you um how you do different things.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so it's not actually it's labor-intensive if you're a person that um haven't been organizing and thinking about their lives over a period of time, right?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: But but think about it, right?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: The people that are gonna be um we're creating digital twins of the people who have IP that we wanna intellectual property that we want to pass on or monetize, they're in positions where they they've been trained how to talk about their lives, right?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like I I I I've been talking about who Stephanie Sylvester is for such a long time.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, do you want the long version?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Do you want the short version?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: I can say it in two sentences, I can say it in in in five minutes.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me what you want.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've been trained for that, so it's not difficult for me to download my life.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um it takes a little bit of time just to be able to sit there and think about what is it that I want to share, but beyond that, no.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: I just you know, like I was in Cape Town in May, and I while I was waiting for my plane to leave, I sat at the airport, um and and I recorded like about two hours just talking into my phone.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So again, I mean, I I can't help but relate this to my own experience and how I would use this tool, so forgive me for that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: But um, because you know, I'm a professor, I've got a million students.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I got people calling me every day.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was a developer, as a management consultant, all that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: I got a book out there called Confessions of an Entrepreneur.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing right one now for my kids that asks me a different question every week, and I have to answer it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I got all this content out there.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: How would you, how would I, um, or how would someone interact with that?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just say I just had somebody send me a text before we got on the call here that wants to talk to me about rezoning a piece of property and any advice I have and how to get through to that.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: So how would they interact with this um digital twin?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm curious with your system.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, basically what they would be doing is that um that I'd be like, well, let me let me give you an example of how we we have done it because I I don't know all the intricacies of what you do, and I don't want to get um clung up on I'm using the wrong example.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: So we have an investor, he's a profil prolific writer, he has he writes for Inc.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: magazine, he has tons of articles.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so we created uh we had him um digitize his personality and then we um we did some interviews, but mostly he already had documented his life, so he just uploads all of these documents into the AI, and um his expertise is startups and um marketing and ad.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: So when we wanted to come up with a new marketing campaign, we gave we gave him gave the digital twin the marketing campaign.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_03: We said, hey, build out a marketing campaign around this, um, eliminate bottlenecks, not people.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we already had some other taglines that we wanted it to incorporate, safe, simple, fast.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh everyone needs a buddy, human digital handshake, and um go and it it went.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: It went and it produced like 50 pages, and you know, then I had to go back and forth with it a little bit, and then I got that 50 pages, and then from there I I sat down and I edited the 50 pages down to about 20 pages because there's like lots of repetition and and it it it gave me um ill nick bottlenecks, not people, how to talk about it.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um we have a we have like a whole thing about um everybody has a guerrel.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: It incorporated that, you know, who is your guermo?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: Guermo is the the go-to rock star on your team, and when he's not available, everything stops.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, are you the guerrillo on the team?
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: So gave us all of that, how to personalize it.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: If you're somewhere where Guillermo is not a common name, or you happen to be somewhere where people associate Guillermo with the yard man, maybe use William.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know that kind of stuff that um that we did, and and so it gave us how to do our LinkedIn posts, how to do our our emails.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we we have like when we send out cold emails, we have like a 30-something percent open rate.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: So that's insane.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because because the message resonates all from his digital twin.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then we sent him the document after I finished editing it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: I said, What did you think about this?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, This is brilliant.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: I said, This is what your digital twin did.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: So that's that's how it works, right?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um and now I'm gonna be I need to go back and I need to we're gonna be doing a marketing campaign where we're gonna mail some fidget spinners to people.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm basically going back to this digital twin and saying, okay, write the the sequence of we we we we have the message we're gonna put in the envelope with the with the spinner, write the rest of the the sequence of the emails, the LinkedIn DM, the um, you know, and see he's gonna put he's gonna put all of that, and I'm gonna sit there, I'm just gonna do some minor edits.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that would normally cost me five, six thousand dollars, and I'd have to wait two, three weeks, and I'd still probably not get something I'm satisfied with.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, wow, that's wild.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: You made me think of like Norm Brodsky when you said somebody that's been with Inc.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_02: magazine for a long time and has a lot of content.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Not gonna guess if that's him or not, but anyway.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can share who he is, he doesn't mind.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: His name's Howard Tullman.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know him.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I used to know all those guys at Inc.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: I lived in Boston for 17 years.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they were all based there back in the day.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_03: He's on at Chicago.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: I see.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: So this is fascinating to me.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Again, so let's just say I wanted to use this tool to expand my productivity and ability to help people.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: What does it cost me?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: It starts at$10,000 for a digital twin.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a business, it starts at$20,000.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: You get um, for businesses, you get four AI agents.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: We can configure them however you want to.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's customized and tailored, right?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: So we have like over 200 agents we've built to date.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: And some of them, when you look at our list, they're like we have five fiscal fiscal agents, but they all work slightly different.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Because everybody does their finances slightly different.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what we bring to the table.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: And people are like, somebody's like, I can just do this for free.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, yeah, you can do this for free.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: You just like how we were talking, you can cut your own hair, or you could just go to a barber, cut your hair.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_03: Or like I said to the guy, like, look, everybody does, everybody can do their taxes for free, but there's a whole industry about doing your taxes.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same thing.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: They do a better job than you'll do, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's the idea.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and and so we we build out agents, we have we have a more robust solution, and um, we were demoing one day, we were demoing one of the solutions one day, and um this guy's like, I can get the same thing from Chat GPT.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I said I said um to the agent, build me a build me a business plan.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm in Coral Gables, and then the agent asked me a bunch of clarifying questions, right?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I answered the questions, and then it sat there for about seven minutes and it produced a business plan.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this guy that was competing with it, he was like prompting it and prompting it and prompting it and add this and remember this, and and he he he he's an expert, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: He's an expert.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: And then we compared our our business plan.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_03: Our business plan was better than his, more comprehensive.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: He didn't have to know, you know, humans are not gonna remember all the different there's more than 15 data points, you know, they were not remembering all of them at any one moment in time.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: And 15, I'm being generous, most people can't remember more than seven.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um the AI will remember the 15 points all the time.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like a very interesting business model here.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's um it takes some some expertise from from you to or whoever works for you to sort of get this thing launched.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then once it's they're in the system and launched, then it then it's go time.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is that right?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: So so we like to do um an agile approach.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: We do jam sessions, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll I sit with you, and I we go back and forth, we talk, I ask you some questions, you tell me something, and then we we get the agent built.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: So that takes about an hour, hour and a half, and then you go off and you reflect on the conversation, you start using the agent, then you send me a whole list of things that doesn't work, and then I say, Okay, great.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: Now we get the requirements, right?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then we go back and we we optimize the agent, and then I send it back.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Do you say go off and do it again?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then you go, Oh, it's not working, and then we're like, let's look at your data, and then it starts finding all the holes in your data.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: So then you clean up your data, and then you're like, Okay, we're good to go.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then after a while, you come back and you say, Stephanie, can you um can you do this too?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: And that's our business model, because um you've seen productivity in the first one, so now you want more.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: So so now you have all these experts out there, and God knows what that you could personally tap into if you want.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, you've created these agents for them, so you've got like the most unbelievable board of directors that one could possibly ever have, it sounds like.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever use that yourself?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I use um we have um, in addition to Digital Howard, we have um an editor agent that's fashion after a friend of mine that is a Pulitz Plitzorat prize-winning journalist.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um then we have uh fiscal buddy, fashion after our CFO, so that it analyzes her financials the way she wants it done.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you know, she it takes her two hours to do our month end, as opposed to four or five hours that it used that she said wouldn't that's how much you used to take before.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, how did you come up with this idea?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_03: By mistake.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: I was at dinner and somebody was talking about like how do we make the world better, and they were like, you should create a digital twin.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, you know, a digital twin?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, we don't have the technology for that.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: This is back in 2016.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_03: But I was like, you know what?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is what I really need to work on.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: That really got me excited, and so um what we've seen, right, is if you look at AI, if you really stop and look at what's happening in AI right now, you'll notice that um the the tech bros out of Silicon Valley, they're just making up stuff, right?
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: They're just doing stuff for to do stuff say there's there's like what what positive thing are they building?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: They're not building any positive thing.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: People that are building positive things with AI aren't in Silicon Valley, they're in other parts of the world.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um and when you think about um why they can't build anything positive is because they have no creativity and um no resourcefulness because they didn't grow in a deficit-filled environment.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so when you look at the parts of the world where you have to grow up in a deficit-filled environment, right?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta be very, very, very constructive and creative um in in how you do do things, right?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, like I'm I'm here in Cape Cape Town, and I have to be I I'm in like this little apartment that's like smaller than my entertainment room, and I have to figure out how to live here.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, first thing is a place for everything and everything in its place, so I don't go insane with disorganization.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: And because it's small, you can't have um a tool for everything.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, I made some popcorn, and I'm like, what what am I gonna put my popcorn in to eat in?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to eat it out of the bag.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I was like, oh, I'll just put it in a pot.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: True popcorn in a pot.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sitting there eating popcorn out of a pot, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like in Miami, I wouldn't, I'd be like, I my mom bought me a special popcorn bowl.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, it's I I get where you're going with that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've always thought, you know, it's interesting.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: I've had people, we've had people on the show here, and just people I've talked to before that grew up with some pretty tough circumstances and all.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and you realize that in ways it was a blessing because that's where they got their their um, as you said, their creativity, their motivation, um all that came from about as a result of the hardship or the uh lack of something.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: In a way, you know, you could look at him and go, Oh, it's terrible that you grew up like that.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've got a friend, he's a Jamaican guy.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um he grew up in rural Jamaica, his mom was a coffee field worker.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you talk about somebody that had nothing.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: She had six kids or seven kids and no husband.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, this guy got like one cough drop a day until he got home at 10 o'clock from school and could get a meal, and you go, gosh, Richard, that's terrible.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: You went through that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Richard is somebody else today, let me tell you.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because of the constraints and the and the problems that he faced in his youth, it it taught him to be very resourceful.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: I I totally understand what you're saying.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, even if you look at Elon Musk, right, um he grew up in South Africa.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_03: He's not he didn't grow up poor, but he grew up in a in a environment where he he's you you're seeing you're in the environments, you're seeing stuff.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you are of means, you're still seeing it.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: And and so he doesn't he do he doesn't think anything of it to sleep on the floor in his office because he probably had to sleep on the floor when he went to the remote villages or whatever.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know where he he learned how to sleep on the floor, but you know, and and and and that when you talk to people, and this is why I love uh coming to Cape Town, we talk about people to people in Cape Town about AI.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean what they're talking about doing AI just makes us look embarrassingly lagging and behind, and it just shows yeah, and and we and so um you know I I did a TEDx and it that TEDx is is turning out to be evergreen, uh, because you know sometimes set TEDx don't age well.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and it talked about how people from inner citizen in Miami um are using AI to bail self-agency.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: So um you can you can use AI to help you with um writing your resume.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: But but but not just writing your resume because somebody asked you for it, but having AI repackage your life in a way that's so that's powerful that you can go, what I did that right, this resets how you think about yourself and then it the evolution comes back.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: The power.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_03: Using the AI to to respond to court cases and being able to just read off of paper so it sounds the way the judge sounds, because I mean, as much as people say they're impartial, we are biased.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: If somebody doesn't speak like us, we think they're they're lower educated, we just instantly assume that they must have done whatever crime they were you they were accused of.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: And if you can't articulate and defend appropriately, then sometimes you end up in places you don't belong.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: But now the AI can parse through all of the information about your case, you could tell it all the stuff in a jumbled way, and the AI lays it out nicely, you go to court, you read it off, you get it thrown out.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of puts everybody on an equal playing field, then, is what you're saying.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: Except the except we're noticing that the gatekeepers are are are not wanting um people to get access to AI.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I make it, I mean, like I do podcasts and I and I do presentations for free because I want everybody that is in airshot of me to understand that if they embrace AI and they use AI and they demand AI is used for good, we can we we can we can we can actually make this be something wonderful and beautiful, not another social media trash.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wow.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big problem you're trying to solve.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the whole idea for the business and then what you just said right there, I mean, that's a really big deal.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: Do you ever feel like I've taken on something that's so big that what can I as an individual do to solve the problem?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or I guess you don't feel like that, or you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: No, um I sometimes remind myself that what I'm trying to do is so big that if I'm not frustrated, then I must not be pushing hard enough.
• 34:53
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• 35:01
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• 35:04
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• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: What gives you so much motivation?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: What was your background as a kid?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: What did your parents do?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, my mom's my mom was uh an elementary school teacher, and my dad was like a government official, and then eventually the prime minister's um advisor.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's I was born always wanting to help people be good.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: I remember, I remember in in in elementary school, there was this kid where everybody just said he was always bad because he because he sometimes did bad things.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I don't think that's fair.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I remember once, like I just said to him, I'm like, why why are you doing that?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like you don't have to be bad just because people say you're bad.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_03: And he just kind of looked at me.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like for a day, he behaved himself, then he went off again, right?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_03: And and so I I always try to see the good in people, I always try to see see um people from for with dignity, you know, people's people say um that I I live a dangerous life, and I go, no, I don't live a dangerous life.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: What I do is I live my advocacy.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_03: I see people and I look them in the eye.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, even walking around here in in all these different countries, I always look people in the eye because if you look somebody in their eye and hold their eye contact, if they were thinking about doing something to you, just for that fraction of a second, they might change your mind.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because I've just interacted with them as a human being.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's why when you go into the convenience store, they always greet you and look at you face to face because that's a reality, what you just said.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it's interesting though that I'm sorry.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that I mean you're obviously such a student of human behavior that um when you combine that with your technology background, those two things don't always go together.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Let's be honest.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of tech people are not real people people, okay?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, everybody has strengths.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, you I'm sure you know about IQ testing and all.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there may be 16 different areas, and they're really high here and they're really low here.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Usually there's some variation in there, and those two things don't all go together.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you're unusual.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I I I I I'm all Renaissance and Reformation was one of my favorite periods in history, and I always wanted to be a good Renaissance woman, and to be a good Renaissance woman, you have to be well-rounded in everything.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: And um, and and that's so that's one motivation.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: And when I was a little kid, my dad would bring home The Economist, and that was like a really hard magazine to read, and and I was I remember like I was like, I can't understand what they're saying, and then I could only read the obituaries, and so I just took to every week I would read the obituaries, and I was like, I want to live a life where I could be in economist arbituary.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: Sounds a little morbid, it seemed quite make quite lots of sense to my nine-year-old mind at the time, and and then I just set out to live that kind of life and venture, and you know, I it I I've done a lot of things that people were like, you are insane, but it it works.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'll I'll tell you um tell you, we were in Kenya.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: My mom and I were in Kenya in 24, um, in Nairobi, and my mom wanted to go on this tour, but the tour was filled.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: The the times that they were had available, we weren't available, and when we were available, they weren't so you know, my mom doesn't ask for a lot of stuff, right?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I was like, okay.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: And she kept like wanting to go on this tour, and I was like, okay, fine.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, let's go where the tour starts, and we'll we'll try to see if we can negotiate or where it way into the tour, right?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: So we get up early, we didn't even have breakfast, we go to where the tour starts, we can't find the tour.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, no, I mean, we're using Google coordinates.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not using some I'm like, I'm using Google coordinates, you can't find the tour.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I tell my mom, maybe you stand in front of this shoe store, we go to the other shoe store and see if maybe it's over there.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_03: So I come back around and I see my mom talking to this guy, and so I get closer, and my mom's like, This is our tour guy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I was just like, This is not our tour guy.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: My mom's like, Yeah, like this is our tour guy.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Then um, so you know, we're talking to the guy, and I said, Um, how do we pay you?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, cash, right?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: So we knew that on online they said he could pay with credit card or cash.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: So I said, Well, we don't have any cash.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_03: So he takes us to this place where we could go get cash.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_03: So we ask him how much it is, and we change change how much it is, and I was like, telling my mom, and so I'm like, thinking, wait, what is he charging is less than um what's on the internet.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: So anyway, so then this other guy comes up and and and he goes, uh, the first guy's name is Snami.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: This other guy's name is um preacher, and so I'm like, there's no way this is our tour guide, because no tour company, especially not what we're paid, is gonna give a one-to-one ratio.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: This guy's a criminal or something, right?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta stay with me, you gotta stand with me.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: So then we say we're hungry.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they take us to a place to get something to eat, and I'm like sitting there, we're eating, and I'm like, do you um I say, like, do you want to pay when do you want us to pay?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Oh, um Godfrey is gonna come and take the money.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, Who's Godfrey?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: So turn guy comes, right?
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: Turn guy comes, and and so I was like, you know, but they're they're good vibe, there's great energy.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_03: So we're like, let's take a group picture.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: So they all like huddle in and we take a picture of them, and I send it to one of my friends, and I'm like, hey, we're on this tour with these guys, and then I said, right there, when they they huddled in, big smiles, and took a picture with us, I knew we were gonna be safe, and then they took us on a tour of Nairobi in parts of Nairobi that the Ministry of Tourism definitely doesn't want us going in two and a half hours, and people were like, that's insane.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: Weren't you afraid?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, never once in that whole thing was I afraid.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_03: I was um cautious, so I did the precaution that I would, and and and I'm sharing that story because I think that with AI we can now have sp time and space to return to our humanity.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I read that in your profile that that's your thrust.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: You return to your humanity.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we hello with these guys, they were great, we had a good time, we have we laughed, we joked, we and they told us they broke down the whole parliamentary government in uh Kenya.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_03: We figured out that they were functioning illiterates, they grew up on the streets of Nairobi, but now they have children.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: We talked about their children, we talked about some of the challenges of um Africans going to the Middle East and coming back home in a body body bag.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like they're just all these all these world issues.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: We were sitting there talking to them.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_03: I I can't I don't know that I can go to a bar in Miami um and and and go from one topic to another topic like we did with them.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you never would have had that experience if you didn't have the time to just spontaneously go to where you thought this tour was, right?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's the whole point.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's exactly how you spend time talking to the people that you wouldn't talk to, and then the whole thing develops, right?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's exactly interesting.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: And and and not only did I have a good experience, but now I have a good interview conversation story and I have a good cocktail party story.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you've got a perspective from somebody else in the world that maybe you wouldn't have gotten, right?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: That makes you more aware of what's going on.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's interesting.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so Stephanie, if somebody wants to learn more about your company and your product and reach out to you, um how do they reach you?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh they can go to avatarbuddy.ai and and we'll um we'll reach out, um, they can contact us there.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: There's a um button that allows you to schedule some time with us.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_03: And if they mention that they heard us heard heard me on on big big talk, um, I will offer them a complimentary half an hour consult.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, that's a great deal.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: So avatarbuddy.ai.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_02: AI is how they reach you.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Very good.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Stephanie, unfortunately we've run out of time, but um it's really been great talking with you.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: You you're fascinating, and you're obviously trying to make the world a better place.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to admire that.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it, and I I enjoyed the conversation and the questions, and this is cool.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna look into avatarbody uhai myself and uh encourage our listeners to do so.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, everybody, um this has been another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_02: Check out our show at BigTalk About Small Business.com.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: We're on all major streaming platforms.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: And as always, if you want to give us money, we'd love to have you as a sponsor.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, Stephanie, thanks so much and have a good rest of your evening.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we appreciate your dialing in with us today.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for the opportunity, Mark.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Take care.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions or ideas for upcoming shows, be sure to head over to our website, www.bigtalkaboutsmallbusiness.com, and click on the Ask the Host button for the chance to have your questions answered on the show.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Stay connected with us on LinkedIn at Big Talk About Small Business.
• 47:05
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