How to Stop Chatting with AI and Start Working with It: Abi Odedeyi on Building AI Systems for Re...

Hi, this is Flora. Welcome to another episode of The Human Side of AI, formerly known as Jam-packed Business Made Easy with AI. My guest today started her career in banking in Nigeria, became country head of fintech company, and then picked up and moved to Scotland after being recognized by the UK government for her work in technology.

Wow, that is already a story worth hearing.

But what Abbie is doing now is what brought her to this show. She builds AI systems for small and mid-market businesses, not the chatbot kind, the kind that actually does the work, the lead generation, the onboarding, the content, the proposals, the operations, and no code required. Abby is the founder of Bloom's Consult and Code Free IQ, and she has trained over 500 professionals across 3 continents. She also has a masterclass on Claude Cowork coming up on May 7th, and that I genuinely think our listeners should know about. The link is in the show notes. Her advice in this conversation is practical, specific, and a little refreshing.

She's not here to tell you which tutorials to watch.

She's here to tell you to pick one real task and actually do the thing. Let's jump in.

All right, thank you so much for joining me. I just want to make sure I'm pronouncing your name right.

Ab—

Abby?

Yes, Abi. So the full name is Abimbola, which means I was born into wealth. Most people call me Abi.

Okay, say that your full name again.

Abimbola.

Abimbola.

You tried.

Oh, man. No, I have a lot of respect in people when they correct me. When I'm saying their name wrong. I think it's wild that so many people are just okay with their name being said wrong.

So. Yeah. But there's something I usually say, I think I got it somewhere, one of those places, English, that if you can pronounce Schwarzenegger, you then should be able to try to pronounce my name, you know? So I'm always fascinated when people get it at first try. So, You tried, I must say that.

Okay, last time. Let me try again.

Let me hear it. Okay. Abimbola. Abimbola. You tried. You did well. Oh, man.

Okay. Okay. Well, for the sake of just not butchering it and being respectful, we'll go by Abby today. That's okay?

That's fine. It's fine. Great.

And Abby, where are you calling from?

I am calling from Scotland, Northumberland, Scotland, to be precise. Wow.

And how did you end up in Scotland?

Okay. I was awarded a UK government recognition in technology some time back. Amazing. So, yeah, so one of the conditions for that recognition was that we had to come here at the time. So that was why I moved here. I moved to Scotland about 4 years ago.

Oh wow.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but I've always been in tech, but the business side of tech. So I worked in, I started off in banking and then moved on to fintech. So it was the fintech talent that got me in here.

Wow. And how, how did your path, you know, I really love, love digging into the kind of the how and the why you got to where you are. You are now, because, you know, I imagine when you were 8 years old, you didn't think, one day I want to be a human API, right? So, you know, talk to us a little bit about your story about how you got, you know, to where you are now.

Okay. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I started off in banking.

Yeah.

And initially, I actually thought I was going to end up in HR. So when I finished school, I started doing certifications in HR and all. But I got this, uh, bank, I got into this bank training program.

Cool.

Where, you know, we went through, I think it was a 12-week program. I can't remember how long. And my hopes were really high that, okay, I was gonna get into, you know, the HR department. But lo and behold, after the program, I was thrown into sales. So, yeah. So I started off with sales, you know, I did door-to-door. Right. I did SMBs, I did, you know, the large corporates. I did all that. And then from banking, I moved on to tech sales. So I went into the fintech side of things where I was engaging with banks now. So banks were my customers, fintechs were my customers, the governments were my customers. So I was in the payment side of the fintech industry. Okay. Yeah. So that was what. I was doing then, and it happened that after a while, so I grew up the ranks and at a point I became the country head of a particular fintech in my country at the time. That's in Nigeria. Yeah. Wow. That's a big deal. Well, I would say that at the time. Yeah, it was, and it still is anyway for the people occupying the role then. Yeah. Like I said, I spent quite a while there. So from then on, I moved and I ended up in the consulting side of things, fintech consulting. So working with payment, working with payment companies, working with merchants too. So I was basically doing all that, but it came to a point where I wanted to build a fintech app. So it had been on my mind that I wanted to build this stuff. Wow. And I started talking to developers, but the particular developer who was meant to build it for me started giving me the runaround and I got upset. I was like, yeah, you're trying to be smart for this. I've suffered this all my, I said all my life, all my professional life, because you know how it is, you get the clients and then you're supposed to sort of manage the client into your system and all that kind of stuff. So talking to tech people has been part of my life, um, career. I was like, so for my own app, I would also still go through this runaround in an AI boot camp back then. And it was called Andre School. And I think it was—

and when was this?

When is back when?

I can't remember how long, maybe 4 to 6 weeks thereabout. And there I started hearing about AI, started hearing about automation, you know, all this stuff.

So is this like, it's like 2022, 2023?

Like when is this?

Oh, one minute please. Can you hear me now?

Yeah, I can. Can you hear me?

Oh, but funny enough, I can't hear you. I think you must have moved to my, my Bluetooth. Just hold on. Let me get that sorted. So, oh, can you hear me?

No, now it's worse. Oh, wait, try again.

Can you hear me now?

Now I can.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Okay, so, so let's, let's, um, I'm curious about this boot camp. Is this like 2022, 2023? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Yeah, thereabout. So that was when I joined the bootcamp and I started learning about Zapier, learned about, um, what was this thing called? Chip. Learned about, you know, quite a number of other tools that existed at the time. And what I liked about it was because it was very hands-on and that had always been my method of learning. Oh, I don't believe it. Just listening, listening, listening. I'm like, okay, could listen to this all day long.

Yeah.

But how do I put it into use? You know, I need to put it to use immediately. So from then on, one of the goals of the bootcamp was that you're supposed to have like a capstone project where you would build your own app. Cool. Yeah. So. Within, I think it took me 6 hours, the first app I built. Yes, because I did not sleep. That was how, how engrossed I was. I did not sleep.

Wow.

Until I finished building and it was called Starters. It was a conversational starter app that helped people with personalized starters for networking events. So you're going to an event and you feel so agitated. It was born out of my own experience anyway. You're like, meeting so many strangers here at the, what do I say? You know, those different icebreakers. So based on your interest, your profession, and some other information you feed it, it'll give you personalized conversation starters. Cool. That you could use at the event. Yeah. So. Built that, then friends and family started reaching out, oh, you built this, or you got it to the App Store. Oh, come and build for me. So I built quite a few for them. And then from then on, you know, talking to, joining different communities, I started having clients reach out to me to build stuff for them. So currently I build AI operating systems for small and mid-market businesses. So Anything from, you know, lead generation tools or systems, more like onboarding systems, content and marketing operations, um, CRM workflows, all those different things is what I do and I do it end to end. So the entire client life cycle is what I help businesses actually automate. And then I teach as well. So I consult and I teach, you know, based on the fact that the tools are there, the systems are there, but people get very intimidated because of the doom and gloom stories that are everywhere these days. So the idea is to help people navigate that journey more seamlessly.

So, so some of the things that, and I, and I wanna pause cuz wait, you just covered so much. Um, some of the things that really stick out to me is You're really a lifelong learner. I mean, so many parts of your story included, oh, another boot camp, oh, another training session, oh, I need to be hands-on with my learning, oh, now I'm teaching. I mean, that seems to be an integral part of your entire story.

Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, before we joined, before we joined, this call, I was also still learning because one of the things I've also found is that it's when you get yourself dirty in the build, that's when you know the issues that people can encounter. You find out the edge cases, you know how, you know, the better ways or the easier ways to do certain things, you know, and that is what from That's what forms part of my teaching. So when I'm teaching, I'm teaching from my experiential knowledge, what I have experienced myself. I would rather not pick things from the sky or from someone else's knowledge and then come and teach it. I like to try out things as well so that I can say, yes, this was what happened when I tried it. It's just like what happened with, so I started off using PlotCode. Cool. You know, when the whole thing started, that was, um, I think it was last year in November or October. That's when I started building with it. And I've built quite a number of things with it right now. Client dashboards, apps, and some other stuff like that. But what I found is that for me that I've gone on the techie side, I can actually work with it. And then I still have some friends as well who are not, uh, techies, but they still can work with it. But the majority of the people I teach find themselves intimidated by it. So what did I do? I went after coworker then. Yeah. And I started looking at the different things you could do. So it was more like a comparison journey for me where I was looking at what Plug Code had done for me, a co-work could also do.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's a learning journey for me. So what that did for me was also to see what was possible for the non-technical business owners that I work with.

So, so how would you, how would you recommend, you know, going, you really going back to this kind of this learning journey. There's so much to learn right now in this space because it's, it's changing by the second, right? By the time you and I get off this call, it will have evolved. By the time this podcast gets posted, it will evolve. So how do you— what do you recommend for someone who is a, is a, a business owner, a small business owner trying to not only one, offer their services and their products and whatever really got them going in their business, but two, maintaining their business at the same time, right? Because that's a whole other part of that. And then three, how are they also supposed to, you know, stay so involved in, in this AI space?

Okay, so let's start with one question at a time. Okay, so what's the first?

Well, that's really the question. How is everyone supposed to manage all three? Stay involved in everything that's happening in AI and really, you know, continue learning that as well as, you know, run their business and offer what their business is, right? So how is that? How are they supposed to maintain all of that and juggle all of that?

Well, What I found, like I mentioned earlier, you can watch all the tutorials in the world, even as a business owner, you can attend different bootcamps, you can do all that. But if you're only listening and not doing, it's not impactful to you. Yeah. It cannot help your business. And because you have quite a number of things you're juggling, it's important for you to look at what So which of your tasks or the things you do on a day-to-day are the biggest time sink for you? Where do you waste a lot of time? Where is it so tedious? And then from then on, the way you can get that is to map out your process. You are the only one who knows your business in and out, so you're able to know the end-to-end, you know, systems of how your business runs. Then from then, you, after mapping it out, you're able to also tell which of those processes would save you a particular number of time. You would know that as well. So you pick that and then You can now look for maybe a program or something, or a video, or one of those things, or get in touch with someone who is building like myself, like, you know, or whoever to help you look at it. You can work hand in hand with people to go very quickly and, you know, to go far, or you can start it out yourself if you are able to sit down and watch, you know, one or two videos, the idea is for you to automate that process that is taking your time. Now you start with one. The reason why I say that is so that you wouldn't get confused and you're able to measure the ROI you're actually gaining from automating that task.

Start with one and measure ROI.

Exactly. And then if possible, if you're already using certain tools, start with those tools, especially if you're paying for them. Find out how far you can stretch those tools. It's not a tools game. You can't be running after tools. That's not what, that's not what it is. You should actually start with those tools. Like now everybody has, has, uh, has access to Google Gemini these days and all those other, you know, so you're able to actually see, okay, I can create content with this. Can it also do strategy a bit for me? Can it do, you know, there are quite a number of things that business owners struggle with. So you have quite a number of, let's say meetings you've had, articles you may have written maybe on your website and all that you can even repurpose, which is one of the things why, one of the reasons why I like cowork that I was mentioning earlier. You're able to use one. Content in numerous ways, all in your voice. Wow. The other day I told it, I was like, I wanted you to get me 50 leads in a particular niche and I wanted it enriched. And it started out, it asked me a few questions and then it got to work. It got me the 50 leads in minutes. Awesome. Yeah. But one thing, you know, that's just a part of it. The idea is to be able to let it walk through your process. So it gets the lead, what happens afterwards? Okay, maybe you're supposed to also now do an outreach to the leads. It can also put, you know, the personalized outreach message together. It can help you define what your ICP is. It can build a framework around that and even turn it into a skill that at the end of the day, you're able to reuse it. So that's something that will be very useful for business owners, especially for people who have multiple activities on their hands. So once you've found that one task automated and you're gaining ROI from it, if you're using a tool like Cowork, you turn it into a skill. What is a skill? It's like a reusable instruction. Where you don't need to repeat that instruction to Cowork again. All you need to say again is, oh, do this with respect to that, to that particular task. And Cowork gets to work. It does not, and that's why it's different from ChatGPT. ChatGPT will engage you and then you will be the one to do the task. In this case, Cowork is the one doing the task and is working in your folders and files.

Yeah.

So that's the beauty. Then from then on, you pick the next connected, the next task that is connected to that task you just automated and then see how you can automate that as well. So the idea is to now build a system around your process at the end of the day so that you now have time to Do the things that are strategic for the growth, uh, to the growth of your business. Now, in terms of getting to know what is happening around you more and more, there are people you can follow. I'm on YouTube and then I try to pick a real life situation every week, a real life build, something I've tried, something I've built for a client, and I show it, teach people how to do it themselves, and then, you know, keep going on and on. And then I, I don't know, but I, I was gonna mention it here that I also have a masterclass coming up to help them set up. Yeah. To set up the Cowork on their desktop and then also build a team of specialists for their business using Cowork.

Yeah, you just covered so much. Um, so first of all, let me kind of work backwards. Where can people access your masterclass?

Okay. It's at co-work.codefreeiq.com. So I'm, I'm going to drop it in the chat.

And I'll, I'll drop it in our resources. Okay.

Yeah.

And, and this is a question that I've, I've been curious about and I wish I had stopped and asked earlier. Um, Who is your ICP?

Who is your ideal client?

Yeah.

Okay. So I work with small and mid-market businesses, like I said. So we're looking at founders, non-technical founders. We're looking at, um, coaches. We're looking at consultants, you know, businesses that have those lean teams. You know, that need, you know, those people who have those lean teams are the ones who have a lot of things to juggle.

Yeah.

So at the end of the day, what, what I'm doing for them is to be able to have an AI specialist for those tasks you used to juggle. Love that. Now you would be like the reviewer because you still, we still need the human in the loop. I'm not for giving AI everything. That's not my, Mantra. I believe that people should still review whatever AI is churning out. But if you've taught it enough to know about your business, you've given it your business context, you've given it your brand voice, you've told it about what you do on a day-to-day, then it's able to do 80% of the work for you. And then you're able to review and send out whatever it is at the end of the day. So I would say people like that are the people I work with. Business teams, those business owners with lean business, lean teams, and, you know, basically most of the people I work with are doing clear.

Okay, wonderful. And then, and then I have your masterclass website pulled up. How do people get in touch with you?

Okay, so you can get in touch with me via email. Okay. And then on LinkedIn, I'm going to drop all my links here.

Please.

Yeah. So my email is abby@codefreeiq.com. And then my LinkedIn, so I'm going to put that here. I'm @beaudetdey also on LinkedIn, so folks can always reach out to me there. Yeah, so that's my— and then I have, um, a call.com link as well if you want to book and then speak with me. So we have discovery calls, look at your process. Yeah, and I have quite a number of tools as well. I can, I can just share them with you later. People can actually use to see where they're leaving money on the table. And then after that, if you feel you want to carry the conversation further, then they can reach out to me. Yeah. It's just a way of helping people audit their, you know, their activities and see where they are actually not, or they're leaving money on the table. Yeah.

So, so Abby, what is You mentioned Gemini, you mentioned Cowork, you mentioned Claude. Talk to me a little bit about your personal tech stack.

Okay, because I tend to build for different clients, I try to work with what they have. You know, I mentioned that as well, that when people are tend, uh, are building, they should, you know, start with what they have. Yeah, but my personal tech stack, is anything. I build on anything. I build on cloud code, like I mentioned earlier, AppMake.com. I've also done some work with Zapier. I started off with Zapier, like I mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Retool. And I've done quite a number of work on those different platforms as well. And I use Supabase a lot as well. Yeah. So Those are the major ones, yeah, that I get to use, but I try to work with what the clients have. And then if I have to make recommendations based on, you know, what they're trying to do at the time, that's also something I do.

So, so two, I could ask you questions all day, but I have two questions kind of before we, before we wrap up. So, you know, you mapped out this, this process that you recommend. You know, you start with one, you look at that ROI, you don't run after tools, you know, you start with really that time sink and then you map out your process and I worked backwards a little bit there, but I'll make sure to map it out a little bit better in the resource piece. And, you know, with all of that said, if someone's listening to this and maybe they're just still using ChatGPT, right? And they're like, okay, I'm hearing a lot more about Claude and oh, Gemini, like I'm starting get a little interested in using these other tools. You know, what is one thing a listener can do this week with AI? What is that one thing that you would recommend, you know, a listener to do this week to really kind of follow that process that you mentioned?

Okay. So what I would say is that you start with one real task, not a tutorial. Start from you, like I said, you know your business, you know where things take too long or where things hurt you the most. And then try getting AI to help with it.

Okay.

That's something. And people need to realize that AI has moved beyond chatbots these days. Yeah. People are still using it like they used Google back then. You type a question, you get an answer. There are tools that actually do the work these days. They not only answer questions about the work, but then go ahead to do it. They go into your files, they browse the websites for you, they connect your emails, they write proposals for you, all autonomously. Oh my God, that word, that one was the— so all autonomously. Yeah. So the moment you see that for the first time, especially when you use it for your own task, you can't unsee it. So it also builds your curiosity. It sends you down that lane that, oh yeah, there is a lot that I can do. Yes. That's something I keep saying. Don't let your curiosity die. Once it dies, then growth stops.

I love that. I love that.

Okay. And, and, and last, last question for you. So, you know, when researching you, um, I see that you, you talk about ethical use of AI, right? And you touched on that a little earlier where you said, you know, we're really, we're still, we're still incorporating the human, right? We're not just giving AI full, full—

No, no, no, no. We can't do that.

Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about, you know, the human touch in AI and also this ethical side that you've talked about.

Well, I would say that What I usually believe is that AI uses your own experience to give you what you want. So if you already have rules that you follow as a business, AI is not the reason for you to neglect those rules. Never. It's not, it's not at all. You have to practice safe use of it. You don't put your, your, how would I say, the confidential documents in there. Maybe your, what, what would I call it? There are times when people tend to just connect to different tools, you know, put their APIs in different things, API keys in different things. No, that's not the way to go. There are ways of actually protecting yourself a lot better. Okay. Your client documents. That are confidential are not meant to go in there. Oh, your internal documents as well.

Wow.

Has to be protected. So if you're working on a client's document, it's possible for you to anonymize the details so that you don't end up giving— it's, it's still been, it was built by a human. I didn't build itself, so there would be some human flaws there. Wasn't it just some weeks ago that, you know, some things were leaked, you know? Anthropic had some kind of leak some weeks ago that was everywhere. And we've heard things like that. You would get mails from companies saying that they had a breach and all that kind of stuff. So you don't want your information to be what is being shared out there. So you have to protect yourself. Before even getting into that business. So it's important for you to have those guidelines, those rules. Yeah. Before you start using AI, you know, uh, what would I call it? More often. Yeah. Let me use that word. Yeah.

And I feel like that alone could be an entire podcast conversation with you because that's, I mean, people get so excited about, oh my gosh, I'm finally starting to use AI to really help me run my business. And it's like, wait, hold on. Before you just get all excited about it, really be intentional about what information you're sharing.

And especially if you're using the free one, especially if you're using the free tools, they use your data at times to train. That's what they do. So, and then this memory thing that you, you turn on as well, it's for them to know a lot. How would I say? It's for them to. To be able to tailor whatever the AI gives you as an output to you. But remember that when you start giving those access, you're also giving access for other usage or other, other types of usage of the data you share. Yeah. Yeah. So I was looking at GitHub the other day and so they have this line It was just yesterday because I have some repos there. They had this line that they were going to start using, was it our data or something? They're going to start doing a lot of AI training. So if you don't want it, you need to go and turn off something in the settings. So look out for things like that, especially if you work in a regulated industry or you work in places where, you know, Data privacy is a thing. It's a thing everywhere, but you know, the limits are stronger, you know, are more elastic in different areas. So you need to protect yourself, protect your clients, ensure that you're not giving away what needs to be, you know, secrets. Yeah. Awesome.

Great. Well, thank you so much for that information. And, um, you know, I really appreciate you. Sharing, you know, your story with us and also just how much information you shared with listeners that they'll be able to, you know, apply today. So I'll definitely be— I want to make sure I grab all those links from you, make sure that they put— I put everything that we need to put in into our resource page. And I look forward to just following your journey and staying in touch with you. So thank you so much, Abby.

Thank you. Thank you. And join the masterclass if you can on May 7th. Yeah, it'll be awesome. Yeah.

May 7th.

Cool.

I've got it right here.

Thank you.

Take care. Thank you. Bye.