Ep. 177 - Sherif Elmasry & Fady Azzouny - AI in Action: Transforming Industries & Supercharging Business Growth

Welcome to Empower to Grow the podcast. I am your host, Hanan Al Basha. Hello everyone and welcome to our post summer episode of Empower to Grow in Business podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you. I'm your host Hanan Al Basha and today's topic is really exciting. I wanted to come back with a bang and hopefully the bang is not just fluff as one of my guests had kind of spoken spoken about. But today we are talking about AI and I know it's AI AI everywhere, but we wanted to talk about it from the actionable part. How is it impacting business owners, entrepreneurs? So we're talking about kind of startups and SMEs today and of course whatever applies to them would apply to corporates and enterprises, governmental, semi governmental organizations and everything related to it. Today I'm hoping that you will get a lot of value. I know that you will, but I'm hoping that you will get a lot of value on the topic of AI, how to use it, what it means for you and actionable steps for your growth. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce my two exceptional guests and friends today. We have Sharif Al Masri and Faidi Hazouni. Hi guys, how are you? Thank you for being here. I know we've been talking about this for a while and I took the summer break so my excuse is we didn't bring this any earlier to the world but today we're here and we want to be talking about this. But before we go in, I would like each of you to introduce yourself just in a couple of minutes who you are and what you do and then we can bring it back to the context of AI Sharif. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm glad to be here with you and Fadi today. I hope we'll be discussing very insightful stuff to the audience. I'm a tech entrepreneur. I've been in the business for more than 20 years. Started companies, exited companies, built businesses from scratch. My background is a mix of technology consulting and interim management roles. I've been in the tech business and I'm currently running a few companies. Among them is macber, where I am the Chief Business Officer and a partner and also mavericka, which is focusing on AI transformation, based out of the uk.

Thank you Sri Fadi, please go ahead and introduce yourself.

Thank you Hanan for the opportunity. Thank you Chief for the opportunity as well. I'm Fed Azuni. I'm originally a veterinarian so and I entered like the I've been doing business since 2012, I believe, and been doing tech business for. Been in the tech business for almost five years now. And the CEO and co founder of a network app, which is an app that connects pet parents with pet care service providers around them. We're operating in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. And during 2023, I started exploring, or we started exploring generative AI to solve our own problems or our own challenges in the company. A year later, I co founded a company called NexCorp, which is focusing on AI communication.

There we go. Thank you so much, Freddie. Thank you for being here. As I said, this is very exciting because again, AI is everywhere. For anyone who still doesn't know, AI is artificial intelligence, but the fact is artificial intelligence is not something that just popped up over the last couple of years. We've seen the early stages of AI when, you know, just as soon as things like Siri, Alexa, algorithms, websites, erp, sas, all of these were kind of the initial personifications of AI. But we're seeing what we're seeing now and Fed you just brought it up. It's more on the generative AI and kind of where we're seeing a lot more development. So let's, let's kind of start there. From your perspective, Sharif, I'll go to you first. What is the shift that we've seen in AI, especially over the last couple of years, because chatgpt suddenly what everyone's talking about, and I think every pitch we've attended individually or together AI is thrown in the mix of any new company.

Absolutely, absolutely. I remember. Let me go back to actually 2018. 2018 was my first encounter as a founder for a company that wanted at that time to build AI products for customers. We were challenged by many issues. The first challenge back in the day, and we're not talking far off. Right, that's six years ago. Six years ago, yeah. So we were challenged by the fact that customers didn't understand what AI can do for them. So a lot of education was required. And it's not only about not understanding. There was a lot of skepticism about the fact that AI is actually a real thing at all. So that was a huge barrier to cross or to overcome back in the day. The other barrier was technical. So you had to build everything. You had to do the algorithm, build the data sets, everything, because nothing was available at that time. It was a very, very steep and challenging curve to actually deliver an AI product to the market. And what we are seeing now with the labs or the large language models is that they are changing the scene completely. ChatGPT made it accessible, made people actually deal with AI on day to day basis. Before that there were Siri, Alexa and hey Google and things like that which already got people with time being familiar with using AI as a companion or as an assistant. However, ChatGPT was the game changer or the introduction of that was a game changer because from a technical perspective it solves the large, large data sets that we need to build and it solves a lot of that background that we need to solves a lot of that technical aspect as well. And it also made it easier because almost everyone you speak to today is using ChatGPT on the form of another. So the familiarity with the concept is already there which actually lowers the barrier a little bit and makes the discussion on a different step compared to six years ago. So I think Genai is literally a transformative moments in the technology landscape.

Okay, Fadi, what are your kind of views on the shift we've had as chief was saying over just the past six years, over the past two to.

Three years, I can't really tell you like what is the shift that happened like six years ago because like I literally started exploring generative AI early 2023. That's it, that's my experience with AI. But what we did with AI was pretty crazy. Like we were adopting this or in, in, in a way we had to use this new technology to solve our challenges. Again, I'm not a techie. I'm, I'm, I'm more of a business person and I'm a veterinarian. But like I build AI systems.

Yeah.

And, and, and the only reason behind that is that I was literally depending on, on ChatGPT when people were like kind of skeptical about like its powers if I may say. I was like literally taking screenshots of, of like softwares that I don't know how to use and just acting like how so what should I do here? And by time I started learning not because like I was looking for something to learn from. I was literally trying to solve my own challenges using software that needed other experience or, or domain expertise and to, to use, I was just asking ChatGPT how, how can I use it? And to be completely honest, like I wasn't able even to pay like this $20 for ChatGPT. So I was using Bing before it became a little bit stupid I think.

But, but you make a very, very important point and, and that is the accessibility that it has offered. I was listening to Mustafa Suleiman who's the CEO of Microsoft AI and his TED Talk and he was saying, you know, he was addressing all the things about AI and our fears and stuff. And he's like, we just have to kind of. I'm rephrasing over here that we have to accept that AI is a new digital species. I'm like, that's interesting.

This.

It's, as you were saying, it's kind of an augmentation to what we can do and it's an expansion to our horizons. And that is not something that was accessible to everyone. I think, Sharif, what you were saying about, you know, the fact that anyone can use it now, you know, you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to be an AI person. I know that I've referred to Chat GPT as my bff, my new bff, Best friend. Forever since. Forever since I started using it because I'm like, oh my God, you know. But there are also the fears and, and before we go, I know we're talking about kind of the, the transformation that is happening. A lot of people are fearing just what happened with the industrial revolution and everything beyond that. It's going to take hard jobs. Every job is going to disappear. People are going to be replaced by AI. I want to talk about that. How do we combat the fears and kind of embrace the transformation that it brings to us rather than the other way around. Shoe if do you want to start your views?

Sure.

I think change is usually faced with fear, Right. So people usually fear the unknown. But I think when I look back at the evolution that happened in the last hundred years, reality is that people were afraid from electricity at the point, right?

Yeah.

Can you live without it now? People were afraid of when the first. They were scared when they saw the first car compared to the hose and cartoon. Can you actually live without a method of transportation, a modern method of transport now? So reality is technology is usually faced with fear. Eventually people embrace it and you usually have the adoption. Like people who get too excited about it, they start, they are the early adopters, they start embracing it, they start adopting it and then people start. There are the next waves of adoption that comes that follow that. So I believe, I'm not saying that it's not fair founded because some people would be fearing losing their jobs to AI. Some people would think that AI is coming for the job. So what I'm going to do, what do I need to learn? So there is a bit of that and I'm not undermining this at All. However, there are two facts here, which is it will eventually happen. We are in an era, what I call the AI Transformation Era. We have already embarked on that journey as human beings. And at the same time, I would start thinking, I would tell those who fear AI start thinking how AI can empower you today to do your job better. What can AI do? How can you use AI to augment your capabilities, to be more efficient, to actually have a better work life balance? If that's something everyone is talking about, AI can actually deliver that. It can deliver someone who's doing a job a better work life balance.

Yeah. Well, first I would like to make a disclaimer. I don't believe in work life balance. I believe in work life synergy. But those who know me know I always advocate for that because you can never balance them out. But that being said as well, Fadi, it's the same thing. I mean, you know, our experience of AI, if we're talking about pop culture, the evil of AI Terminator coming up and we had the Matrix where we're all plugged in and we become slaves to the machines or lately even Atlas, the latest movie for Japanese Jennifer Lopez. And AI now has its own conscious and it believes humans are inferior and they're going to destroy all of us. Tell us from your perspective, where do you see the fears of AI coming in? Or how far can it actually go?

So like, I don't know, like, but like, like I truly believe that AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of what they do. I believe we'll go back to what humans really do did, which is, I don't know, like agriculture or something. If robots are not going to be doing.

Even that. Thank you for taking that away.

Yeah.

So seems like it's going to be life, life balance after.

They're talking like people, people are talking now about UBI Universal Basic Income and like speaking about like governments. They, they should start, start thinking about that because like, anything that you give AI access to will be able to handle it sooner or later. So when we debate that, I see, like, it doesn't, doesn't grow the fingers in the right way. So like we're in August 2024 now. Like wait until September, like it will draw fingers, like in the right way. So like, if, if now AI is doing what it's doing, if now AI can at least replace the customer service department, which by the way, most of the companies handle or, or give this department to, to fresh grads to deal with our customers like the most important thing in the whole business. We leave it to fresh guts anyways.

Or outsource to other companies, other countries and everything else.

So, so yeah, so like giving it to, to an AI, I believe it's, it's, it's a better idea. Like it already speaks all languages without any technical knowledge. Like every single founder can do this. So, but like, if, if this can be done now, how is it going to be? Like next year? Okay, the year after? Okay. Like in five years. Education, health care. If, if now I should pay a physician or a doctor, like $50 for a checkup or like whatever. If, if the checkup now is, it costs $1. Like it's, it's better for, for all of us. It's bad for the doctors, it's bad for professionals. But like, what are we going to do? I believe that. I don't know. Like, I, I cannot compare, like, what are humans going to do? Because like right now, AI agents can control keyboard and mouse. So if your job is controlling a keyboard and a mouse, you're already replaced. Someone is going to do this, build this function using an AI system and that's it, you're replaced.

Sam Altman of OpenAI, like, you know, the developers of ChatGPT, he was asked that question. He's like, will AI replace all humans? Are we have. Will we have nothing to do in the future? And he's like, no, I don't believe that. I just believe we're going to be doing different things. Because at the end of the day, you're still, you know, you still still needs to be programmed, coded, kind of assessed, prompted, and all of this. Now, that being said today, as you were saying in August 2024, we don't know how it will develop in the future, where it becomes more autonomous in its own developments and everything else. But okay, so this was kind of the bigger picture of things that were said, fears that people have and stuff. Let's talk about today. As a business owner, as an entrepreneur, whether you have a small or medium enterprise or you have a startup rather than, I think, Sharif, you were saying AI just stop using the fluff and Fadi you refer to it, it's not a tool. How do we actually capitalize on AI for, for growth? And, and now we're not just talking about growing from point A to point B. We're talking at the potential of exponential growth. So let's start talking about the applications of AI in our everyday business. Fady, please start like take us through what you're seeing right now.

So, so like it's, it's not only AI, it's, it's automation. Like 90 and 10 only is, is dependable on like LLMs. So if you know your SOPs, if you know your workflows, you're there. Plus you can, you can either depend on your tech team to build your automation or to build your workflows and then add this AI component that you train. Whether you fine tune an LLM or you just like give it some instructions and some files to retrieve information from. But like it's, it's more about like the, the, the, the, the, the management behind it, the business behind it. If you have your job description there, if you have your communication plan there, if you know what your business does, if you know every single person, every single person in the team, what they do, you can easily I believe build an AI system that takes care of a full department. So again like the easiest thing to talk about is customer service. So in the customer service department you need a lot of people if you're serving a lot of customers, if your business is dependable on like WhatsApp or making phone calls or WhatsApp or whatsoever. So building an AI agent that answers simple questions about your company or even support customers with, with the software that you have built or again whatever you're going to train it on. It speaks all languages, you can train it on any kind of culture and it drastically lowers the scaling cost. You can literally operate in France, I don't know French. Like this happened with us in vetwork that someone from India tried one of our AI agents and we didn't train this agent on Hindi but like it replied in Hindi so, so yeah it, I, I believe like scaling now will be much easier scaling business scaling to other, other geographically parts of the world. It will be much cheaper because you don't need as much team members, even offices, laptops, mobile phones, Internet, subscriptions. All of these seats on all of these SaaS solutions that the companies use, you will not need any of this. You need one seat for the AI and it will take care of everything else even. Plus I will not take more time. Basanya, I would like to.

Go ahead. Go ahead. Even what?

Even the CRM. Why do I need to see a CRM to look at the customer's information? I only need to look at it because like I need to pick up where we left the conversation. Like I need to understand everything about the customer. But if the AI understands everything about the, about the customer, I don't need the CRM even. I need, like, I need the value of the CRM for the AI enough for me. And this AI, like this cycle that you can build with an AI system that, that, that collects data from customer service, for example, and, and curate campaigns based on like the most repeated keyword or like the most repeated requests from the customers live to your social media channels. Like, it's crazy. It's beautiful.

Yeah, I know, I, I agree. It's beautiful. It's just kind of something majestic that's unraveling in front of us and we're living it, we're experiencing it. Sharif, I know you're from the viewpoint of augmentation rather than possibly elimination of jobs and everything. What's your view on how business owners in today could be kind of utilizing and capitalizing on AI for their business operations?

I think where Freddie and I come from is based on personal experience. We have already incorporated AI in our business operation. I think this is the fact that we both, I know that from a discussion with Fadi, previous discussion with Fadi, and I know that we both incorporated AI in our business operation that we can see the significant values it's delivering. And I will, I will refer to a conversation before I move on to how it can benefit business, but I move on to one conversation I was having internally with the team as we are deploying AR agents and at first, so we have deployed AI agents, for example, in areas like software testing in macber. And that has literally saved us hours of work, hours of manual work of someone doing that job. And of course, the question came, is this replacing us? Is this replacing the team? However, the technical manager on my team, Ahmed, basically told me, I see what we're doing here. We are going to be delivering much more projects with higher quality, more efficiently, with the same resources we have today. And I think he nailed cannot be more simplistic or more direct of a statement more than this. I think it's brilliant. So that's exactly what AI can do. As you said, I come from an augmentation perspective and we are working with customers now here in the UK on the procurement aspects and what can deliver, what AI can deliver to procurements. And when you look at what the procurement department does, fed evention, CRMs, ERPs, things like that, these are so procurement departments, they have to sit in the middle of systems, policies, procedures, lengthy contracts that they have to deal with, long negotiation aspects that they have to go through, and thousands of requests that come from the internal departments for them to buy stuff procure stuff, source stuff or do whatever, or just validate some aspects of the contract. If we are able to save 50% of the time, and I'm being extremely understated here when I say 50 because it can possibly do way, way more than that if we can save 50% of the time of a procurement professional in a business, letting them focus on much more strategic negotiations, much more strategic sourcing. So all the like, when you, when you receive a huge tender, how do you package and everything, all that, that's not the strategic part. It's been done thousands of times. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. However, reality is procurement professionals, they spend hours and hours breaking down and rebuilding packages for tendering. And that's something that AI can do in less than a minute. We're not talking hours. So if you multiply that from a productivity perspective with your existing team, again from an augmentation perspective, it will definitely make you use your team in a better way as a company, as a business, as a business owner, utilize your team on a much more strategic aspect, much more reasoning aspects and much more human interfacing. So the part I don't think AI, I've seen areas where AI is negotiating contracts or at least doing the initial screening. So this is part of the, this is part of the offering that we do as well. However, when it comes to the final strategic negotiations, nobody will negotiate with AI on the final contract. That's my, my opinion. Fadi would probably disagree with me on that. But, so, but, but I, I think if you, if we are able to augment operational tactical aspects, that leaves massive, massive and saves the business massive amounts and makes it much more efficient and makes the customer satisfaction way better. And now we are in an era where businesses measure employee satisfaction and net promoter scores are no longer when it comes to customers, come to employees as well. So I imagine businesses that run efficiently, if they do this in procurement, if they do it in hr, if they do it in customer services, as Fadi mentioned, that will increase the satisfaction even amongst the employees themselves.

But both of you have referred to now customized generative AI solutions. So you're developing it as per what's needed and stuff. And I know there's that of course, that we are experiencing and we're working on. But there are also other solutions that are being promoted as AI, but actually they're just digital transformation options or there are, and I'd like to touch on that just so people understand what's the difference. But there are also a lot of big names that are integrating AI into their offerings. Like, you know, now Canva has AI presentations and graphics and all of this copilot, of course, of Microsoft. You can practically do anything and everything. You. We're seeing this growing and transforming. But a lot of people are still confused because going back to what you were saying, there's a lot of fluff and everyone is just using AI. I want to take a step back and kind of differentiate actual generative AI solutions or options or assistance versus just digital transformation methods.

Okay, so I'll. I'll put the disclaimer as Fadi did. I'm not technical guy. I'm the business guy as well. But as. As having said that, I believe it's not AI. We're talking here about an agentic approach. We are talking about specifically AI agents. And I would like that differentiates from automation. And many are referring to automation as AI. Well, I would say it's like the first version of AI. It's like trying to build like version one of something. So some people are decided that, yeah, we, everyone is talking AI now. So we will label that version one as well with AI still automation. So if you're moving something from here to there or moving a process, that's not an agentic approach, that doesn't require an agent approach, it requires automation. I'm not saying that AI, it's not. I'm not drawing a clear differentiation between AI and automation. But what I'm saying is that what Fadi and I were discussing here is a completely different approach. We are talking about agents. We are talking about virtual employees. And when I say a virtual employee, I say it's exactly. Imagine the journey of a person that you bring in to the organization. So you onboard that person, they learn about audio policies and procedures. They go sit with the different departments. They learn everything about how everybody does the business before they are able to operate and do their job and becomes productive and become productive. So that's what a person would be doing when they enter a company. Right? That person can now be an agent. That's what I'm trying to. To say. That's the agentic approach. That person can be an agent. However, that agent still requires the onboarding process that the person would go through. So the customization phase of the agent would be the onboarding, learning about the policies and procedures, integrating with the systems. If you have a CRM, if you have an erp, if you have anything that would be integrated, that's part of the learning phase of that agent. And then after a few weeks Compared to month to human, after a few weeks it will be 100% productive and increases in quality over time. And that's the learning curve that in reality human cannot compete on. We cannot compete with the learning curve. As Fadi mentioned today, AI, maybe it cannot draw the finger perfectly, but September, October, probably it will. And that's the learning curve compared to someone learning to draw as a person. Right. So it takes much longer time span. And I think this is the brilliance of AI and how fast it can integrate in a business. And that's the clear differentiation between the agentic approach, bringing AI agents into the organization versus automating something that moves it from one human to, to another.

Freddy, what are your views on the confusion between the automation or transformation versus the generative AI and agents approach?

You're just basically like giving, giving AI, delegating to AI if I might say. So you delegate certain functions to AI and you don't have to do it like all at one time. You can start like with baby steps first and everyone will see for themselves. Like, and it doesn't cost as much as it used to cost before. Like and like speaking about like this general AI solutions, it's taking like the essence of AI and like throwing it away because like the essence of AI is customization, personalization. You're building your own AI solutions. So if, if for example Canva is providing like this platform or the foundations for like the graphic designing, you should customize this and make it work for you AI. This, this privileges, privileges like to, to take decisions and actions. It's already driving cars. I believe it can run a business. So.

Yeah, yeah, some, some Altman believes that too, that it would run a business in the future. You don't have to worry about that. Just tell. It would tell her, tell AI what business you want and they will develop the business. I mean that's what. That's. Now you want a business plan. You wanna. I was playing around with the TAM Sam, some of the business and you know, let me, let me explore a bit more. That's something that used to take forever to be able to research it and find the right sources and, and make sure they're validated and stuff. And literally that was like a 20 to 30 minute exercise that I was going back and forth and doing that. Okay, so there was a lot that we unpacked and I know there is a lot more when it comes comes to what we could be seeing and I know that we can't be saying what's going to happen in five years. That's not valid anymore. Like going beyond the six to 18 months is unrealistic when it comes to the development just because of the exponential growth and development that we're seeing. But I want to wrap up with this because usually we do this as a half hour which we have exceeded. But I don't mind at all and I'm sure everyone listening to us doesn't mind so we'll go an extra 10 minutes. But, but I want to start looking at tools. So if today a business owner is exploring and I think we have to differentiate between SME owners and startups because startups usually are tech based, tech enabled. So they're in that space. So let's start with the SME owners, maybe Sharif the hybrid SMEs, you know, talking about that concept, bringing it back. Today they're exploring, let me see what this can bring. How can I capitalize on AI? Let's start with giving them some options they can start exploring with. Not necessarily something that's customized. Again, even though the cost is much less than before, it is still there is a capital cost that needs to go into customizing your AI agents. So from what's in the market and you don't necessarily have to mention the brands or the specific, specific products but kind of the functionality, what can they start exploring with to augment to increase their efficiency, productivity and of course profitability. Fadi kind of some of the tools that you might be already using in your business or you've seen others use.

Okay. So basically I use like the like the. Known chat bots that's available out there. So chatgpt Claude is amazing for all kinds of stuff. Yeah, so, so building a deck, definitely writing emails, I don't know like visualizing creating dashboards for a certain sheet through cloth and its artifacts. It's amazing. Writing code, I don't know like everything like Claude specifically is great. Specifically also in handling large context, large amounts of data. So yeah that's, I believe that that's something that I use the daily and it's where it all starts because like if there is something that you're trying to achieve or trying to build and you don't know how to do it, you just ask the right question.

What about with, with the vets? I mean vet work was, was your, your first business. Tell us how that was impacted by AI and how the vets are now kind of capitalizing on your platform that chooses AI for their everyday work.

So like let me tell you quickly like the story that we, when we started exploring generative AI. We had some challenges. Most of our customers prefer WhatsApp, so we need to have someone answering WhatsApp24.7. So that's where it started. So we created an agent and we called her Asila. She speaks all languages. She's a personal pet assistant, trainer and nutritionist. When we built Asila, people started asking medical questions. So we built Hakeem, the first AI veterinarian built to answer pet owners questions. When we built Hakeem, we found out that veterinarians are actually asking Hakeem questions about like surgeries and, and dosages and, and it's not trained to answer veterinarians. So we built Vet Pro, which will be, inshallah, the Alexa of veterinary clinics. Currently the, the version that we are currently developing will be able to understand X rays, ultrasonography, calculate dosages, give all information that a veterinarian might need, not only for dogs and cats, but like for all other species. And this is only the thought, like this again, this is only the thought. Like I envision an, an ATM like thingy in moles where you take your cat or dog and just like put it inside. It will take photos, measure the temperature and then like give you a full report. Even dispense medicine if it's something that can be done. Yeah, so, so yeah, this is like, this is the front facing agents that we have been. We have internal agents that we call Nizam, which is system in Arabic. And it's a lot of agents like accounting, an email agent, a social media posting agent, graphic designer. They all talk to each other through an internal server that we have built as well using AI. And they have achieved what I personally was not able to achieve in my own company, which is the collective intelligence. They all know what they all need to know. So if something happened here in the company, every single agent learns about it.

I love that. Sharif Everyday tools and practical tips for Business owners.

I think Fadi covered the two main tools that we all use, which is the OpenAI platform and Claude. So I think these are the two main LLM platforms or large language models platforms that we all use. I would like to take a different view. Feti, I like the names of the agents that you came up with. We have Sherlock, we have Flash and we have Mobi and we have Pixel. So they are completely different kind of agents that work for us.

So sorry, we're targeting MENA region. We're talking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so basically and, and the fact that you give them names, I like the fact that you try. We try to by giving them names, we try to humanize the AI and make them more accessible to people as well. And that's important. I'd like to take a different perspective as an advice. If I'm a business owner in an SME or I'm a department head or a director and a big corporate, where would I look? I would look at time consuming goals, anything that has where has been repetitive issues that things take so much time to happen.

The bottlenecks in the business.

The bottlenecks in the business, that would be the first thing. If I'm not sure where the bottlenecks are, I would go my second guess, my second best guess would be to go to all the supporting and administrative functions. So I would go to procurement, I would go to hr, I would go to finance, I would go to marketing, I would go to customer services. These are the areas where I think AI would be extremely effective. I would go to legal even for, for, for some of the operational and tactical matters as well. So, so basically these are the areas I would go. I would prioritize which one I have the pain. So I'm. If I'm struggling to manage and retain a finance manager, I would start with finance. If I'm struggling to manage and retain customer service agents because they are all juniors and they are all. There is a high turnover when it comes to this role, I would start with that. So I wouldn't say it's a one size fits all, but this would be my sort of checklist that I would go through to identify where I would put or deploy AI agents to solve my pain.

I love that. And once you know, you can always go back to ChatGPT and say give me some AI solutions to be able to help with this, in case you don't know, because I mean there are new tools coming out every day and there are platforms that are kind of integrating AI in such a fascinating way. I know and I've spoken of this before. Again, I'm a boutique consultancy service so I have limited staff and I wanted it as lean as possible. Now with ChatGPT and other platforms that have AI integration, I literally don't need. Oh, there we go. I literally don't need departments and people that I used to hire before, of which the onboarding was a very long process. The outcomes were not exactly what I wanted and stuff. It's. I'm just using it for social media management, for, for any administrative issues for research purposes and all of this. So there are a lot of tools out there and there are a lot of platforms that are proving and themselves very useful, but also new platforms that are coming up and new ways of integrating AI into your business to make it as efficient and as effective and hopefully as profitable as possible for you. Because again, SMEs and startups have limited resources. We're talking about the human capital, we're talking about the financials, we're talking about time and effort. And I think this is the whole point of why we wanted to have this conversation, to make it as practical as possible for business owners to look around. As both of you were saying, between the bottlenecks and what I love, Fadi, what you were talking about, because that is being customer centric. What is the customer looking for? Okay, let me support them and develop that for them. Maybe now it's not the, the pet owners anymore, it's the vets. It's not the vets, it's us internally and being able to not just be reactive but sometimes also proactive. And this is how we could use possibly AI to support us in that manner. As I said, I could be talking another two hours about this and I know both of you will will share with this with me and we're not even going into the technical details yet. We're just looking from the business perspective and how we can capitalize on it. But I want to thank you so much and I know we will have follow ups so I'm just putting out the invite right now that we will be having a follow up maybe in two months. Let's see where how the hands are being written then and how the development is happening and what other solutions have come out in the region and globally. Sharif Al Masrifa, thank you so much for being my guest today and thank you for sharing all the knowledge.

Thank you so much. Thank you Freddie. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you everyone who has joined us today and as always, empowered to go. As I said, the summer break is over so we're going to come back be coming back every Wednesday with a new topic of being empowered to grow in business. And until then, I wish you love, abundance and prosperity. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Empowered to Grow podcast. I'll catch you on the next episode. And until then, know that empowered you empowers others. Love, abundance and prosperity to you all.