#460: MASTER the Pivot: The Art of Following Your Passion with Iman Oubou, CEO & Co-Founder of Vocable.ai

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I do not want to film another video ever again. But I have so much to teach and I love to kind of create content around like this is how to use AI models. This is what the latest new feature on Vocable is. Or this is how you know Claude is better than ChatGPT. I want to create that kind of content, but I just don't have the time to do it. So now if I'm able to streamline that process because of AI, I'm able to teach more people more often. But it doesn't take too much out of my time.

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Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with us this week. Okay. It's so, so rare that I have a repeat guest, but today I had to because not only is she brilliant, she's going to bring you so much value and teach you how to create content without lifting a finger. Yes, I understand your pain points. Everyone hates creating content. Everyone knows they need to do it. Everyone knows they need a personal brand, but no one knows where to begin. They all want inspiration. They don't have an arsenal already created. So they're screwed. No longer. My friend is here to help you today.

Okay.

Imanu, whose unique blend of experiences as a tech entrepreneur, AI instructor and content marketing strategist, positions her as an influential voice in the dialogue on the future of AI and content operations. Standby for a second. Don't get nervous. She doesn't speak AI. She speaks normal. She is a nerd. But she also is really cool. So she blends the two together. Don't get nervous. Her latest startup, Vocable AI, is an AI tool designed to streamline the content creation process. The company's software combines research, ideation, planning, production and optimization in one centralized workflow. Helping small businesses or you to stay organized and on top of their content development cycle. This is what you've been missing. This is why you're not creating content. Problem solved. Her work with vocal AI coupled with her role as an educator and speaker underscores her commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the AI and content marketing spheres, ensuring that Businesses are equipped to navigate the evolving digital landscape efficiently and innovatively. Iman, thank you so much for being back with us this week.

Oh, thank you for having me. Not once but twice. I feel so special. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to be here with this whole new chapter of mine.

Let's start there actually, because this is so interesting and you know, my audience, you know, you've been on the show before. Everyone's always so interested in like, what does a path look like to become successful? What does the path look like to create your own AI business? And here's what's what, guys. I Met Iman In 2018, 17 or 18, I don't remember which year it was. At the time you had just wrapped up being Miss New York, right? She was from the pageant world. Before that she was a scientist. Like, let's not just say she was in pageant, but she had done plenty of different things, but she had just literally been Ms. New York. You had just launched also Sway, which was a whole initiative and a platform in media around elevating women in business. I mean, since then you've gone on to raise capital, you've written books, you created podcasts, you sold that business, you moved from New York to Miami.

What.

So much has happened in your life. And just give us a little bit of a snapshot of like, because I want everyone to know success isn't linear and you didn't just stumble into success with say, and that was it. So can you walk us through what's happened a little bit in your life?

Yeah, definitely. I think the short answer for that is just my way of living is through trial and error. Just like the same way I operate businesses or any initiative that I push out there. I don't always go into something thinking that I need to have experience or that I need to have education around it. I just know that I am really good at self teaching myself anything as long as I'm actually passionate about it. And so I don't shy away from pivoting. And every time I do any interviews or anything talks around, you know, sharing my story, I feel like the underlying common theme is my ability to pivot when things are not where I want them to be or things are not going right or maybe I think I can do better or maybe there's something else that I'm more passionate about. I think most people operate from a place of, oh, I need to stick it through. And because I went to school for this subject, I got to have a whole career in it. Even though it doesn't make me happy. But I have never really been that way. You know, obviously, I went to school thinking I was going to become a doctor. Then I've pivoted from. From wanting to practice medicine to going into science and R and D, because I actually tried what it was like to practice. I did medical missions around the world, and I realized that practicing medicine was not for me because I'm too sensitive, and I was crying all the time, delivering bad news. So I immediately tried it and knew that it wasn't the right thing. And I was okay with saying okay. I thought I wanted it, but it's not for me. So now let me pivot to science, R and D. So doing cancer research instead of being an oncologist, practitioner. And I did that, and it was really fulfilling. I went to grad school for it, did medical missions, too, around the world while I was doing that, and then ultimately moved to New York and was also doing beauty pageants on the side. And, you know, I think that experience itself also opened me up to a whole new world that I didn't really know much about. And what it did for me, unlike what most people think about pageantry, is like, oh, it's so all glitz and glam. It's like, very catty and whatnot. But there's a lot more to it than people see. And the part of it that really, I feel like, shaped me to be the woman I am today is this life boot camp that pushes you outside your comfort zone to really become the best version of yourself, because you can't stand on that stage unless you're fully confident, graceful, poised. And most importantly, to even get to that stage and win a pageant, you have to know yourself really well, because there's a portion of it that is all about interviewing. Not all just on stage, but you have to meet with judges, and then they ask you questions about, why are you the best woman in this competition? Why are you the best representative of our country, of our state, whatever. In order to answer those questions, you got to dig deep, and you got to know yourself. You got to know your vision. You got to have a vision for yourself. So that taught me a lot about who I wanted to be. And because of that practice, then I started realizing I think I'm more entrepreneurial. I'm not someone who can work in corporate. Even though I felt like I moved to New York, I had my best dream job, dream scenario. I worked for a great communications agencies that handles a lot of, you know, biotech companies and I thought I had finally lived the life that I was looking for and that I was dreaming about when I was in grad school, only to realize that every day I went to that job, I was so miserable. And I couldn't understand why, because I'm like, wait, I knew I wanted this, but now I have it. Why don't I like it? But then, you know, I just realized I'm more entrepreneur, I'm more creative. I like to come up with ideas, I like to execute on them. The corporate environment, although my job at the time was amazing and I had no complaints about it, it just wasn't for me. And sometimes you just got to say that this is great, but it's not for me. So at that point, I was kind of forced to think outside the box. And because of pageantry, I had a platform, right? So then that platform gave me a voice that I felt like I never had before. And through that platform, I was able to launch a podcast, you know, interview other women to learn more about their unconventional path to success. And that eventually led to my media company. And so, you know, things kind of just started falling into place almost on their own. Once I was authentic to myself, once I was able to say, okay, I'm going to try something and if I don't like it, I'm going to be open to pivoting and surrendering to that flow. And that's ultimately, I feel like how I've been living my life, at least my career. And so after my media company and everything that I learned through that content kind of creation process and running a content team, that's how I also now ended up in AI, which was very, almost unpredictable. Like, if you asked me even two, three years ago, I would have never thought I would be running an AI startup now, helping small businesses automate their content creation through AI. But, you know, I think it's all, again, the ability to take inventory of my skills, my learning lessons, and then apply them forward. And it could be anything. It could have been AI startup, it could have been just being an AI speaker. And so, long story long is that you gotta be open again to pivoting in life when you don't feel like you're truly living your authentic self and you're not also applying your strengths and your skills.

Okay, you just gave so many great examples of how readily you're available or open to pivoting and making change instead of saying, oh, no, I got into medicine, this is what I'm supposed to do. I already put all the sears against it so many people listening right now do that. So how do you get yourself. Let's use the medical example that you gave. You're in this pipeline becoming a doctor and you see yourself and you're like, I don't really love this. How did you give yourself the grace to say, okay, I'm going to go ahead and try something different and walk away from this now?

Because I deep down believe that there is a world where you can wake up every single day super excited about the life you live and the career you have. And if you're not there, even, and I'm not saying, look, give up after one week of going to a job, it takes some time, but you need to know when to fold and you need to know when to hold. And we can quote a Kenny Rogers song. There you go. That's like my themes. So. Because it's true, because I know there's like this mindset, like, you can't give up. You got to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Yes, I agree to that fully. And that's literally what I do too. But you can't force yourself into liking a career line or a job that you know for a fact you're not. You know. So I think saying and being honest with yourself is the first step, right? So to be more practical here is like, I remember waking up and just saying, like, I don't think I can live like this for the next month, let alone for the next 10 years. So if you're dreading that morning, like, oh, I have to do this and I have, there is a better world, there is a better scenario, but you just have to get yourself to surrender to that and actually look for that path. And of course, it takes a little bit of digging and researching, a little bit of what you want. I'm not saying quit your job and just figure it out. You have to also have a little bit more self awareness, right? So what am I good at? Why do I not like this job? Right? So take inventory of what are the reasons why you're not really happy or where you are, and then see how you can, in small steps, work towards that until you're able to really get yourself out of that job and into something more meaningful for you. Ultimately, I feel like we have to be fulfilled, we have to be super passionate and we have to also feel like we're walking the right path and living our purpose to do our best to. I know that I have really great work ethics. Right? That's something I never doubt. But I know and I've seen this happen so many times. When I'm in the wrong environment, when I'm in the wrong job, I am the worst employee. Like I am just unemployable, you know. And it's not because I don't know how to do things or it's not because I'm not educated or skilled. It's just because I'm not interested enough to put in the effort. And I feel like most people operate that way. We're just like kind of automatically trying to get up and do the bare minimum to. But you know, you can live a much more fulfilling life when you can really give your best and you're all because you genuinely want to, not because you're forced. And so that to me is like really my mindset with anything that I do and even my own business. Once I feel like I hit a point where maybe I'm just not passionate about what I'm doing and it's my own business, I will find a way to pivot and then go for something else that I feel like maybe it's time now to move on to something else. And so I think that that's really simple. But people struggle with that because we are taught to stick it through and that we can't complain and that we can't, you know, really pivot and maybe some things will will not work out in our favor.

So meet a different guest each week.

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I asked you to try to find your passion.

Well, that's how you sold Sway. And you know, of course like with anything, anything is a risk, right? That you're walking away from. But that ended up being such a smart decision that you made. One of the other things that you did similarly around the same time was you made the decision to move from New York. So not only have you made pivots around business, you geographically did.

And I want you to talk a.

Little bit about because I was shocked. I'll never forget when you called me, you told me you were moving down here. I'm like, what? I was so hyped obviously, but I was so surprised. I never could have imagined you outside of New York. And now and I want you to talk about this, seeing you, how much you love Miami and I think you were even surprised by it and what you've learned. And one of the things that you say often is like how does this make me feel? And I know that recently you've been back in New York and you're like, I don't like how I feel as much there as I Like how you're really tuning into that. If you can talk a little bit about that.

Yeah.

One thing I want to also point out is that there is the life that we think we want, and then there is the life that is meant for us and is aligned with our highest purpose. And so this is something I learned recently, the past couple of years, because of this move. And. And I would say it's not even a move. I basically hit a reset button. And, you know, this I. For six months, I was kind of debating with. I had this internal debate that just. I couldn't sleep at night. And, you know, even though I was trying to go on with my life, wanting to think and forcing myself to think that I was living my dream life and I was. For the outside world, it looked like everything I've worked towards, I got. But then going to sleep at night was really difficult for me because there was something deep inside of me that I just couldn't explain, I probably can never explain, that was just pushing me to hit the reset button and say, okay, the business that I launched almost 10 years ago is not something I'm passionate about anymore, and I need to move on from it. And it's also not a business that I feel like is good for even my mental health at the time and for my skills. I just wasn't growing anymore in that business. So I was really prompted to be like, okay, I need to sell or just shut down. Either way, I'm not continuing with it. The relationship I was in, which was a decade long also, and I was engaged at the time I hit a reset button and I just walked away from it. Even though I felt like that was. I thought that was my person again. The city I was living in, I thought that was going to be a city I live in forever. I mean, I'm obsessed with New York. I love it. I've always dreamt of being in New York forever, but then somehow I woke up every day and I had anxiety just being in that city. And to me, it was just like. Almost like a physical sensation. My body just had this insane amount of anxiety that I experienced that I never had before. And then I learned later on that when your body reacts that way, it's because you're just not in the right environment anymore. And then the people around you, what you wake up and do every single day, the city you live in is not good for you. That's why your body's reacting to it. And I had to make a very, very, very tough decision because it wasn't backed by logic. When I went up to my parents and even when I told you, yeah, I just want to hit the reset button, I just want to move away from this and from that. But there wasn't like one single specific reason why. It just felt like it wasn't the right life for me anymore. But again, it took six months to really get to that level of trust that I was making the right decision. And ultimately, I chose to follow intuition versus logic because logically speaking, I should have stuck it through, and that was a great life. Why would I ever mess that up? But intuitively, it was not for me, and I will say that and for the people listening that might be going through something like this, because sometimes it's hard to make sense of situations. Is all I did at that point when I made the decision is that I asked the higher power, whatever you believe in, God is, if I'm making the right decision, please show me signs. And then immediately, as soon as I made the move and every single thing started falling into place on its own, I met random investors that brought my business to life and at a random restaurant in Miami the day after I moved here. And then, you know, my brother wanted to go into business with me finally and helped me build the product of my dreams. It all just almost just fell into place without me forcing it. Because I went into this saying, okay, I'm going to hit a reset button, but I'm going to take some time. I don't have to figure out what's next. I don't have to have a decision made tomorrow about what's my next business or what's my next job. I just want to go with the flow for once and surrender, and maybe I will fall into the right path. And that's, I think, ultimately what happened. Of course, I took action along the way, but that action came from a place of inspiration versus a place of anxiety, which I feel like the last 10 years, I operated that way. Right now, I'm operating from a place of inspiration, clarity, alignment. Last decade, I operated from a place of control, fear, and anxiety. And you can feel the difference. Like, even you've known me for a while. I think most people that have also just seen me recently and then have known me before just can also tell the difference. Because you're so trusting of where you are in life that nothing scares you anymore. And. And that's ultimately now where I am. So, yeah, it's been a long way coming.

It's been a huge change in the way you think and the way you operate and how you trust yourself. And yeah, it comes across loud and clear, like it radiates from you. However, if someone had said to me or you when you did say to me, I'm going to go ahead and walk away from all this and move to my start over. It's like, guys, big reminder right now. Listen to yourself, listen to your intuition. And like Iman said, I love this exercise she goes through. Now pause for a minute. Check with how you feel. How do you feel in front of this person? How do you feel in this environment? How are you feeling right now doing this task at work? Like, check in with you. Because so often we get busy and we're like, oh, I'm supposed to go on a date at this time and I'm supposed to be here at this time and. And you don't stop to think, wait a minute, I don't even want to go. This is not what I feel. And I love the other day when you called me, you said that, you said, hang on a second, I'm feeling anxiety going to this place right now. Wait a minute. Makes me think I shouldn't be going. This is not how I want to feel. Walking into a situation and I was like, boy, I wish somebody had taught me that years ago. I always looked at it as like, whatever, just hurry up and go. You don't stop to actually ask yourself, but when you do, you make such better decisions.

I know. Since you also talk a lot about confidence, I will say that having this now exercise and also being more in tune with how my body reacts to certain decisions and also just being more in tune with my own intuition, I have way more confidence. And it's genuine, authentic confidence versus the confidence that I had back in my 20s and early 30s. I felt like that confidence was almost manufactured because it was all based on like, oh, experience. And trying to really talk myself into feeling confidence versus now, it feels more from within. It's just because I am so trusting of my own circumstances, my own path, and also I'm not easily swayed by external circumstances or opinions. You know, I'm just more grounded in who I am again. It took a while to get here. It took a lot of trial and error, a lot of experiences, a lot of failures and some successes, of course. But now ultimately, like, I'm finally at a place where I could say I have molded into the woman I've always dreamt of. And not because of what I have and what I've achieved, but because of how I show up every single day. So in my body and in my mind, Like, I have zero doubts about where I feel like I need to be going. I have more clarity about my business. I have clarity about even just where I'm at now, living in Miami versus New York, right? Most people are like, why were you even Miami? It's not even like you. It's not the city for you. But I'm like, you know what? I feel good here. And it's a city that regulates my nervous system, and that's where I need to be. You know, anything that brings more regulation around my nervous system and calms my nervous system, that's for me. Like, that's how I learn now to calibrate situations and make decisions, too. Like, is this person for me or not? Is this person good for me or not? Am I making a good decision or not? A lot of it is also now more intuitive than logical, which, you know, wasn't the case before. So from a confidence perspective, this is also an exercise that really helps to become genuinely confident or you don't have to try to be confident. It just comes naturally.

That's such a powerful shift. And for anyone listening that struggles with anxiety. Like, I hope you hear Iman right now, because so many people look at her. You cannot judge a book by their cover. And people say, oh, Ms. New York. And she's got everything she's telling you right now. She struggles with anxiety, with calming herself down, with listening to herself. Like, everybody's struggling with these same things. Don't think that the rest of the world's got it on lock and you don't, because that simply is not the case. So thank you for being honest about that.

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Into a little bit of I remember how murky it was when you first started out with Vocable and like not knowing what direction to go. How do you navigate that? Like how did things come together because you go to school for AI? Like how do you figure this stuff out?

Yeah. So I mean I had a little bit of an idea around AI back in 2019 and even when I first started my last company, my last media company, I always had this idea that we're going to get to a place where we can automate a lot of the content creation aspects of the lifecycle. And that because of I would be able to also help with the writing process and just basically streamline a lot of the manual tasks that go into the content creation process. And so with Sway, which I feel like was the stepping stone for me to really think through, how does AI help in automating content creation process? I really wanted to almost scale our operations at the time without having to hire more editors, more writers in the team. So my thought process was if we're able to innovate here from a tech tech perspective and automate a lot of those tasks that my editors and writers are doing, I don't have to actually go hire for more. I can just use the AI to create tools within our platform to help our members who are writing on Sway to create their content without having to actually have a human helping them edit and write that content. Right. So that was my first, I think, encounter with all right, how do I practically figure this out and bring AI into the place so I can scale my business without having to have more overhead? And so because of that pain point at the time, this was 2019 I was able to dig deeper and I'm also really good at being super curious and research things. Once I have like a problem, I need to solve for it. And most of the time, especially I think being a scrappy startup founder and entrepreneur, I'm just used to doing a lot of things on my own versus outsourcing immediately, not only because of money issues or anything, but also because I genuinely want to learn myself first before I bring on anybody else to manage that process. Because I've done that before where, you know, you have a problem and then you bring on someone to help you solve for it, but then you're not able to properly manage that person because you don't know what they're doing and what you're doing. Right. So being able to learn that was important for me. So I started researching a lot of about, like generative AI and how can AI help you create content by just prompting it. My brother, luckily for me, is a software engineer, so I think that kind of helped me a little bit, kind of dig deeper into, you know, have him look into creating a prototype for Sway at the time to automate our content creation process. And he started doing that and we really loved it at the time. ChatGPT obviously was not around, but there were a lot of AI models that existed in the market, but they were just a lot older. GPT2 was the first one I was fine tuning, but it was a lot harder to work with because again, they're not as easy now to use as the chatbots. The chatbots made it so much more mainstream and easy to use for the masses because you're just talking to it in human language and you're just prompting it like you're talking to a person. But at the time when the AI models were just models and you had to fine tune them, you have to do that in what we call playground. And it's a whole other process. So luckily, again, my brother was there to help me walk through it. And so we built this prototype, right, to just kind of test it out on ourselves for our own team. And then we started kind of shopping that around to see if investors would be interested in that. And then the more I talk to people about it, the more they said, well, this is actually really useful for not just your members on your platform, but people that have small businesses that they need to run, other content creators that are struggling with their creation process. So it would be really weird to just have that in your platform but not available to everybody. Why don't you create this as A software that's standalone versus putting it as part of Sway's platform. And so that's when I started thinking, okay, this is actually really great idea. And this is only going to evolve more and more where there's going to be a lot more to the content creation and AI than just the writing process. So at the time I made a decision to move on from Sway and then start kind of thinking through building this AI software. But basically, I think for me, the reason why I really got into AI early on is because I had a pain point I was trying to solve for and I thought AI was the right way to go. And I just knew from a technological perspective, we will be heading to a world now where it's all about digitization, automation and all data. So data is, they said, the new oil, right? So I had to kind of get in that mindset and start thinking, if I'm going to have another business or maybe if I'm going to run another business, then I need to be very well versed in how to create processes that can be automated and scalable. And that's, I think, ultimately what people should think about when they think about AI. Most people kind of shy away from it because they think, I'm not an engineer, I'm not a software person, it's not applicable to me. But. But it is very important because anyone that runs businesses, or even within organizations, or even as an employer individual in your own life, you have to think about AI as something that can create processes that can be automated and scalable and repeatable. So ultimately that's to me why I really thought that was something I wanted to get into early on. Because the world is headed that way. And so luckily we're right there.

That just reminds me another key point that I want everyone to just take a moment and notice. Get into a growth industry like Iman's, in the right place at the right time. That's not by chance. It was by design, because she pivoted away from something else to get into this. For a long time I was in the radio business. The radio business was in decline and it made my life so much harder. You're doing the same thing you'd be doing in a different industry, but you're making it harder for yourself. So take a moment, look at the industry you're in and make sure it's a growth one. And if it's not, take the steps to start changing it now. You will make your life so much happier and so much more better. Okay, so you were struggling at first, like anything, you're building something out of a pain point, which makes so much sense. But how do you start getting it to the next level to where you guys are today? Like, what were some of the decisions you made? Or like, or how did you start landing on these massive stages? Teaching about AI. So you built your name and your credibility so quickly.

I will boil it down to a very simple concept and it might sound too simple and maybe not helpful, but honestly I was just, just geeking out over it. I was so excited about all of it that. Because it just felt like things were coming out and developing so fast and it was genuinely revolutionary, right? Like it changed so many things and it changed how we do business. It changed even now how I run my life. I mean, even my grocery list and like my Sunday errands are run by AI at this point. So it just was like one of those aha. Moment that I had where I was like, like I'm genuinely like spending hours reading about it and sharing it with others on my social. And that's how I attracted these other opportunities, right? So I attracted obviously the speaking opportunities because people saw that I was a lot more knowledgeable about AI and not only that, a lot more passionate about how to apply it, right? So I think one of the things about me as well is that I'm not technical, right? So I didn't go to school as a software engineer, I'm not a coder, but I'm just geeking out over the application side of AI. And I think that resonated a lot more with the public. Because it's one thing if an AI researcher or an AI engineer is explaining AI, right? So it's very technical and you lose a lot of people there. But it's another thing where someone just like you and I, I mean, I'm just kind of another like business owner, content creator. I'm not again, very well trained. I didn't research AI, but I'm able to really take a lot of the technological advances in that space and understand how I can apply it for my, as a business owner, as a content creator, as a marketer, as, you know, just a human in society. And that's, I think, where people started to relate to more. It's like, oh, someone who isn't also as skilled in it, but then was able to understand it easily and now is simplifying that for us to understand how we can also apply it and what are the use cases for us, right? And I think that's the biggest thing with AI. Now is we see all these news coming out and it's exciting. But then most of the time people kind of are left with one question. Okay, this is all nice and fun, but what does it mean for me? Like how do I use it?

Right?

It's like, oh, they announced a new model, great. So what does that mean? Like how can I use it? Or how is it different than the last model? And that's I think, where maybe there's a little bit of lack of education there and like there's a gap, right? So there's like the technical people that are talking about it and explaining it and that's pretty much who I learned from a lot of the time. But then I take that and then I kind of digest it on my own and then apply it it on my own. And then most people are not really doing that on their own, right? So they're busy running their own businesses, they're busy with life. They don't have the capacity or maybe even the bandwidth or passion to figure out how to use the latest AI model and play around with it. And then how does that going to help them with XYZ in their business, Right? So I guess that's where I come in, right? So I love doing that and it's exciting to me because not only it's good for us for Vocable, right? So every time we're kind of thinking about new features with Vocable, we want to know what people people are struggling with and how can we bring AI into building a product that is easy to use for them, but also for me as a business owner, I use it every single day with my businesses now I'm, you know, I'm able to run a startup with a lot less resources and a lot less money than my first startup. And I'm in AI, so. And I'm in a much more techy startup than the last one. But because of AI, I'm able to streamline a lot of my marketing and operations that I wasn't able to do that before. That's basically like how I got into just the whole AI space.

So tell us a little bit about, because I know this is gonna be helpful for a lot of people. What are the right AI tools people should be using now and how should they be using them? Because I know like you even mentioned, oh like even your grocery list and I am the opposite. I'm not like out there looking how can I use AI to help my life and my business? And I know a lot of my.

Listeners aren't doing that either one, I would say before you even go there, you want to know what your pain points are and what you're trying to use AI to solve for, right? So maybe you're not struggling with your groceries and it's easy for you, then you probably don't need AI for that as much. But I see it as more. Don't go force trying using AI, but find what you're struggling with first. You know, whether it's like a business process or maybe it's something that's like, I don't know, like scheduling for your kids and whatever during the day, that that could also be something that you can streamline. So what is something that you. One you're wasting too much time on and you can probably easily streamline with technology or something that you're struggling with because it's scattered or the process is not in place and you need to use AI to potentially solve for that. So that's where it starts. And then I think based on those pain points, then you look at what the use case ends up being. So it could be for your business, for example, it could be customer support or marketing, you know, copywriting, or it could be like ideation for your content that you need to be pushing out there. It could also just be organizing your content calendar and scheduling in a way that's scalable and repeatable so you can do more with less. So once you have that laid out, okay, here's what I want to use AI for because I'm struggling with xyz, then you go into looking up which AI tools, of course, are best for that use case. So the bare minimum that you need to be using at this point is AI chatbots. Right? So that's ChatGPT, of course, that everybody's familiar with Claude, which I think, and you know, you and I talked about this. Claude is a competitor to ChatGPT. And it's at this point, in my opinion, much, much better at a lot of tasks than ChatGPT. And then there's Gemini, there's other chatbots like Pie that are more like apps on your phone, but definitely at least two AI models that you need to be experimenting with on a daily basis. And that I would suggest ChatGPT and Claude. And then there's another layer now. So if you're very well versed with the chatbot, you know, and then you're like, okay, I don't want to keep prompting too much, or I want a little bit more sophisticated features and that help me not just with generating copy or answers which is what chatbots do, right? So you just ask them a prompt or a question and then they give you the answer. But if you want more sophisticated features like organizational management, productivity features, then you want to look at AI powered tools. And so the best way for researching those are directories. So there are so many directories now that people can look up. One of them is there's an AI for that, which is actually really cool. So basically, so it's a directory of any AI tools out there and they also have GPTs there. So as you know, there's different GPTs now that are very tax specific on the GPT store. So if you go in onto there's an AI for that and you type in let's say customer support or data analysis or whatever that task that you're trying to use AI for, then it will pull out a list of top AI tools that specifically help you with that. And at that point you look into it. You know, this is again a case by case. I try not to go out there and recommend too many tools to everyone because I know it's a case by case. One is budget. Two, it's for a big team enterprise versus small business. Three, is it actually doing what you want it to do? So you have to experiment with it and a lot of them have free trials, so it's not hard to do, right? So I want to use AI, I want to figure out which tool it is. Yes, I can listen to other people's recommendations, but it is my responsibility as a business owner to do my own research and also stay apprised of what's out there and what kind of tools are popping up for different use cases. So I typically talk to people about AI integration in a process and a playbook versus hey, use this tool, use that tool. Because I know it's a case by case for different people. So I would say for people that are just now integrating AI, this will be a great like step by step for it, right? Figure out what your pain points are, then come up with the what use case and then look up a directory to see what AI tool or which AI chopbot is best for you.

Meet a different guest each week.

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I asked you to try to find.

Your passion, talk us through something that you've done recently that I think is just so cool. And I think of my listeners will think it's cool too. When you have people, whether it be on your website or maybe people are always oh, I need to pick your brain about this topic. Or there's always frequently asked questions that you're getting how you were able to create a digital live clone of yourself to manage things like this live clone.

Well, I don't know that it's live.

It looks like it's you and it's talking to me. It is the weirdest thing ever.

It's basically a scanned version of me and it's. Yeah, like a digitized version of me. But it's interesting. Yeah. So you and I talked about this and I also did a presentation at mindvalley about AI avatars. So it's called AI Instant Avatars. Which by the way, for anyone listening, this is the future of AI. I mean, I think 2024 is only the beginning, but definitely going into next year you will see a lot more creators, business owners, myself included, using AI avatars to scale their video marketing. And you know this. But I definitely hate filming content like that is one thing I just absolutely hate. It's hard for me to balance that out with running a business and being like a founder in tech mode and then being a creative after that.

So.

So I jumped at the opportunity to test out this whole AI avatar concept which basically is this idea of you upload a video of yourself, kind of like how we're talking right now. So I could have probably filmed myself doing this and then I would upload two minutes of it. You only need two minutes of video footage of you. And then there's this app called. It's not an app, it's a web app called hey Gen and there's a few others, but hey Jen is the one I've used. And so you upload that two minute video footage of yourself and you wait for it to clone you. So basically it clones you as you are, right? So make sure that your background is the one you want. How your hair looks, exactly how I look now is going to be my AI avatar. And so then you have that AI avatar now available to you. Of course, if you like it, great, you keep it. If you don't, then you can continue uploading different footage or re recording yourself until you find the right avatar for you. But then you have that available where you can just create now video content using your AI avatar instead of you filming that content. And the way it works is you can upload your script directly to the app. So you basically just give your AI avatar a script and it just lip sync it and then says it right as is. Or you can also record your own voice into the app. So then basically it's going to be your AI avatar, but then it's your voice that you recorded, but your AI avatar is actually the one saying those words and you can also clone your voice. So hey Jen clones your voice in the process of cloning yourself. But I found that 11 Labs and you guys can take notes of this. 11 Labs is the best tool to clone your voice. So what I did is I cloned my voice by uploading a voice note to 11 Labs and it cloned my voice and then I integrated that voice because it's much better and it's more like me into Heygen. So now I connected my 11 labs cloned voice to my AI avatar on Heygen. And all I have to do now is just upload scripts for the AI avatar to say things that I wanted to say or teach people the things that I want to teach people and I don't have to film another thing ever again. So that actually is now something I've been experimenting with in the back end. I haven't yet posted any of this content, but my team, because my team just hates that I'm at the bottleneck, right? So they're like, oh, we need you to film something so that we can create videos for you. But I'm always either on the go traveling or just I'm not in the mood. So they now cloned me enough times to be able to just give me a script that I can edit for myself and I can just give that approval. And so now they can create all the content about whether it's like vocable tutorials or me teaching you how to use cloud, or me teaching you how to clone yourself without actually me having to to film that content myself. And there is actually a case study where this tech guy who has only been using now his AI avatar and is getting 25 million views on his YouTube channel, just using his AI avatar to explain tech news and create content around tech news. And so this is now becoming more and more advanced where you couldn't even tell a difference that it wasn't him. And it's actually even more interesting because when you just use the AI avatar and just, you know, you flip flop between the AI avatar and the graphics and animations, you don't have too much time to analyze whether it's an AI avatar, if it's actually a real person. So you can even tell whether or not it's a real person or it's an AI avatar. And that's kind of how he was able to really grow his views and channels. So I'm like, wait a minute, this sounds like my dream because I do not want to film another video ever again. But I have so much to teach and I would love to kind of create content around like this is how to use AI models or this is what the latest new feature on Vocable is, or this is how you know Claude is better than ChatGPT. I want to create that kind of content, but I just don't have the time to do it. So now if I'm able to streamline that process because of AI, I'm able to teach more people more often. But it doesn't take too much out of my time. So yeah, that's hey Jen for you. So hey Jen and 11 Labs, take note. Those are definitely two apps you should be looking into now because they're getting better and better, I would say by the day. These AI avatars are looking so good. And soon enough, by the way, you'll be able to change their clothes, probably the background, you'll be able to customize your AI avatar. It's insane.

Okay, so this weekend we're creating mine. Thank you very much. Okay, so next, let's talk a little bit about, for the people listening, they're like, I never know what to do to create content. How does Vocable help them? Can you walk us through a little bit about the Vocable process and how people can use it in their life and in their business when it comes.

To AI and content creation. I had this realization that I felt like we've been thinking about AI content creation all wrong. 1. I feel like AI shouldn't just generate content, it should also manage your content life cycle, which I feel like is where most people struggle, right? So it's the process. It's not just let me write a copy here for a caption or let me write an article here and there. It's more like, how can I create a process that I can really scale and have it organized and repeatable? And especially for small businesses, they don't have a lot of those resources, right? To be able to have a whole process in place to create content at scale, it's not just like one piece here and there every now and then, like one blog post or one guide. It's like, oh, I have a schedule of content calendar for the next month of like 30 pieces of content and I did them all in one sitting. Like that to me is content success when you're able to really create that whole content calendar in one sitting without having to kind of last minute do the things on a whim. So that's one, right? And then I think the other realization I had is that the real power of AI is not in just one off prompts, it's in understanding and automating your entire content process. And then I also feel like when I had talked to a lot of small business owners and just even content creators, people don't want to become prompt engineers. It's just becoming now this like, oh, I have to figure out how to prompt this the right way to get what I want out of ChatGPT. And then I have to do it not once, but multiple times for each piece of content separately. It becomes more daunting because you think, oh, AI is helping me create content quickly. But when you think about it, if you're trying to create like 30 pieces of content for the next month, prompting ChatGPT for each piece of content is, is a lot of work and it's a lot of back and forth to actually get what you want. So basically I thought, what if we could use AI to fix the entire process, not just one piece of it? And so taking basically all these talking points and pain points that I just mentioned, I created Vocable with one specific goal and is to transform content creation from a scattered, frustrating process into something more automated, repeatable and scalable. And you know me, I'm very process driven. So the way we kind of create a Vocable is one you don't need to constantly prompt. And that's one of the pain points I feel like most people struggle with when it comes to AI. It's more like point and click, right? So I want to create a content plan. Great. So I can click on that. Create new content plan. All the prompts are engineered in the backend for you and they're already optimized as well with best practices from content marketing. So instead of using prompts, basically we're using briefs, right? Which is like a best practice for content marketing. So the process is pretty simple. So you go into vocable, you create your brand, right? So you want to make sure that your content is on brand and tailored to your specific topics and niche and audience. You create your brand and all you have to do to create your brand is copy paste your website. So our platform scans your website, scrapes all the information from there around, like what your industry is, what your value proposition is, what your business description is and topics, and then creates a brand identity for you, right? And then from that brand identity, of course, you can edit it and review it as you see fit. You create a full content plan on vocable based on the content you need. It could be LinkedIn posts, YouTube scripts, newsletters, blog posts, guides, whatever your business needs. You can create a full content plan with those types of content included in your content plan just from your brand identity. And now, boom, within like two minutes, less than that, you have a full content plan already mapped out for you on bookable. And the way, and again, I'm very process driven, the way it's generated is it looks like a trello board or an airtable list or a contents calendar, right? So it comes with briefs. So it's not just a list of ideas for your content, it's actually ideas that are very detailed. Like what is your title for that blog post? What is the description, what is the content structure, what is the keywords that you need to use? All of that is generated for you without again having to prompt. And based on that, you just start drafting, right? So you just go down the list of all your content ideas and it drafts, drafts, all the content for you. And now basically to simplify it, you've gone from just putting in your website to creating a full content plan with ideas, briefs and drafts ready to review in less than five minutes. And that's a month's worth of content. So in one sitting, you have completely fulfilled your task of creating a content calendar for the next month. And now at this point, all you have to do as a human in the Loop is to review and edit the drafts and then make sure, of course, everything is on brand. Maybe you want to add more personal storytelling to it. Again, so you're just an editor in this platform. You're not the creator anymore. You don't have to manage things, you don't have to come up with the ideas. Everything is done for you so that at the end you're just basically editing and reviewing and then scheduling for publishing. So my thought process around this is that that was basically the step by step process I did for any, you know, businesses I've done content marketing for or for the startup that I ran before. And there is a very specific way of creating content that guarantees content success. And so we basically married best content marketing practices with AI to simplify a process that many people are either oblivious to or choose to skip because they don't have the resources or are just, you know, again, too busy to implement in a way that actually scales our content. And we did it also in a way where you don't feel like you're dealing with AI, but rather just a tool that helps you tap and leverage into AI to actually create content that is effective and do it efficiently.

So who is vocable for? Who should go to the site right now and check it out?

Small businesses, content teams, content creators as well. So anyone who's creating a lot of content pieces on a monthly basis. And again, just to clarify too, Vocable is mostly for text based content. So it's not creating videos, it's not creating images, but it's creating scripts. Right. So if you have YouTube, then it creates YouTube scripts. If you have blogs and it creates long form blogs. If you have Instagram, it creates captions and ideas around Instagram posts and then it creates LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn articles. So it's really like meaty content that you need to create, which I think most people struggle with the most. Right? So keeping up with your blog, keeping up with your LinkedIn, your guides, which is for lead generation. So creating guides. So yeah, for small businesses, content teams and content creators. Anyone who's creating content on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, which is everybody, right?

Everybody needs to be creating content. If you're not creating content, this is a solution you've been looking for. How do they get signed up? Tell us where to go and how. Everybody listening can have Vocable start creating this content for them.

Yeah, so you go to Vocable AI and you start a free trial and there's a very simple onboarding that you go through. So again, this is where you also get a little bit of a glimpse of what it can do for you. You can put in your website and it creates a full content plan for you that you accept and then you start a free trial and then boom, you're already kind of. Once you start your free trial, you already have a contents calendar made ready for you. At that point, just start drafting.

So vocable AI, go get signed up for your free trial. And Iman, how can people follow you and how can people keep up with you?

Yeah, I'm all over Instagram and LinkedIn. I'm very interactive with messages, so definitely reach out to me. So it's Iman, ubu I M A N O U B O U And.

You can't miss her peeps. All right, go to Vogue. AI, sign up for the free trial now. You can thank us later. Until next week. Keep creating your confidence. You know I will be.

I decided to change that dynamic.

I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.