AI-Driven Marketing: The Future Landscape and How to Adapt

In past episodes, we've talked at lengths about the need to create personalized experiences and connect with our customers and our prospects in new and innovative ways. Melding personalization with new forms of connection, even though it's really daunting, is becoming increasingly essential in today's AI-transformed era of modern marketing. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Strategist Marc Haine. I am thrilled that you are here with me today. We're talking about artificial intelligence in marketing. My guest for this episode is the CEO and founder of Kush Digital, Aziz Musa. Today, we will be putting a spotlight on the seismic shift occurring in marketing due to the integration of artificial intelligence. We will explore how AI is reshaping not just content creation but also things like search engine optimization, customer engagement, and the entire landscape of digital marketing. We will delve into how businesses can adapt to this new era where the value of content is evolving and the importance of maintaining and creating genuine personal interactions throughout our processes. Our discussion will not only highlight the immediate strategies to leverage AI but also to prepare you for the long-term implications of marketing within this new digital world driven by the need for personal connection and to leverage advanced technology. My one ask is that if you do know somebody who could use this information because I'm telling you this is going to be world-class, Make sure you share the link to this episode, please. In today's fast-paced digital world, AI is burgeoning in marketing, not just as a trend but as a complete paradigm shift. Traditional content and traditional content-driven methods are losing their edge completely. The challenge lies in adapting to a landscape where AI is influencing every facet of our marketing, pushing the value of personal face-to-face interactions to the forefront. Believe it or not, people are thinking, hey, if it's AI, we're going to lose all this human connection. But really, the demand is completely opposite. And as we navigate these changes, I'm really curious to hear about your experiences And your thoughts. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, in the last year or so, what challenges or successes have you encountered in integrating AI into your marketing strategies? Are you able to leverage the magic that is AI? I'd love for you to share your questions or your stories in the comment box. If you're joining us live here, I'd love to see you pop your questions and your comments here. We will answer them live on air. Or if you're watching it on the replay, go ahead and put the comments in. We'll pop back in on YouTube to make sure that we answer your questions. But we'll also maybe share it on social media using the hashtag #ExperienceLeadership. I'd love for us to dive into this transformative journey together. As I mentioned, my guest today is a visionary leader whose story transcends borders and industries. The CEO and founder of Kush Digital, Aziz Musa. Aziz's journey is really a testament to the visionary leadership and his indomitable spirit. As the youngest public company CEO, publicly traded company I should say, CEO in the UK, he had already carved out a really great niche for himself in the corporate Yet, it was his bold move to Sudan in 2017 that truly defines his legacy. With an aim to build a digital economy, Aziz founded Kush Digital. However, as war erupted, businesses crumbled, and the landscape became more increasingly volatile. So, he decided to relocate to Egypt. What was interesting about that was despite Despite the challenges, Kush Digital didn't even just survive. They thrived. Their clients didn't even know they moved. They emerged now as North Africa's premier digital marketing agency and making waves all over the Middle East. But Aziz's vision for Sudan was broader than just one successful company. He recognized the transformative power of digital knowledge in a country on the cusp of major change. With this in mind, he trained over 4,000 Sudanese individuals in digital marketing entirely free of charge. This wasn't just about imparting skills. It was about catalyzing change. This is one man catalyzing massive change. And as a result, hundreds of startups sprouted heralding the birth of Sudan's digital economy. In the face of adversity, Aziz didn't just safeguard his company. Really, he sowed the seeds for a nation's digital awakening. Aziz, welcome to the show, my friend. It is so great to have you here.

It is my absolute pleasure, Marc. It's so great to be with you.

Fantastic! Before we get too deep into today's topic, could you just tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients?

Sure. So we have clients around the globe from the UK, US, into Saudi Arabia, and they work across multiple industries. We are kind of industry agnostic. So we offer digital marketing services, that's SEO, SEM, social media, paid ads, content. And I think the topic of today's discussion impacts us first, us as a digital marketing agency and by proxy, every other digital marketing agency and their clients. So, I think that there's kind of a lot for us to dive into today and I'm really excited for the conversation.

Yeah, likewise. I've just, you know, this whole idea of artificial intelligence and how it's not only just affecting marketing, it's affecting businesses all over and kind of how we create and how we start brainstorming. and using the technology, especially the generative AI that's out there now. Since we are talking about marketing, can you define what we mean by traditional marketing or traditional content marketing?

Sure. So, look, there are lots of sort of standardized definitions. The CIM based in the UK talks about a value exchange. In the US, it's more focused around satisfying customer needs. I have my own very specific idea of what marketing is, and it's something that I've kind of lived with for the last decade or so. Us as marketers, we only have one job, and that is to change your behavior. That's it. We don't really do anything other than that. So that behavior can be a small behavior. It could be you engaging in a piece of content, telling a friend about something, or it could be a really big behavior, which is buying a product or buying a service, or the very biggest of all behaviors, which is telling your friends and family about that product and service. So ultimately, all we do as marketers is we aim to change your behavior. Now, in terms of content, content marketing is just a small facet of that. So if I wanted to change your behavior, Marc, ultimately I need to be able to get to your 5 senses. I need to be able to influence you in some way. So The easiest way is through your eyes. So wherever your eyes are, that's where we should be marketing. There are other ways too. I'm sure you've noticed if you ever walk past a Cinnabon, there is that smell, the very, very specific smell associated with Cinnabon. Well, that is a manufactured smell, right? So they distribute that smell on purpose because that creates associations in your mind. So really, as marketers, we just try and change your behavior, and if we do it successfully, we end up achieving whatever company's goals we have in front of us.

So then, when we think about what's happening with the artificial intelligence within our world now, what are some of the most significant changes AI has brought to the marketing landscape? Because you are talking about this idea of the more we understand you as a human being, the more we can deal with you as a human being to change your behavior. How has AI brought How is it changing this marketing landscape now?

Well, listen, I think you used 2 words in your introduction which were exactly right, seismic and paradigm, and both of those are absolutely true. There is currently a paradigm shift which will lead to a seismic shift in how marketing is done, and I'm absolutely sure of that. So look, as a company, we have adopted AI tools really early up to, you know, 2 and a half years ago. We were using a tool called Writesonic, which was one of the first on the market. We were one of their first customers. And it was relatively basic, but it was quite clear where the approach was going. And then ChatGPT came in and changed the game, if you like. So as things are today, content that you read is being produced by AI. Now, to a layman, they wouldn't necessarily notice the difference. As marketers, we can always tell if something is AI written, but it's not what's happening now that is so enthralling. It's what's about to happen. Because you mentioned before, ultimately what you wanna be able to do is you wanna be able to create personalized content for every individual. So imagine a world where when you open Facebook, you don't have an advert which is targeted to you as a segment, a male living in Canada who likes, I don't know, fishing, for example. for example. What if that ad was targeted to you, Marc Haine, addressing you personally and your personal preferences by name? That's kind of where we're going. But ultimately, what is the most likely outcome is that we'll be so bombarded with personalized messages and personalized engagements that we'll switch off from them and we'll revert back to, let's call it real marketing, face-to-face interactions, things like this, things that are real and human. And look, in history, there are so many examples of this. I believe this based on what has happened in the past. Look, we're both of an age where we probably remember our first work emails. Do you remember getting your first work email address?

It was magical. It was like, oh my God, I am part of this new human era.

And at that time, let's say in that first year, what do you think, if you were to guess, what percentage of emails did you open and engage with?

Oh, every single one of them.

And today?

Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

Exactly. And that's what we tend to do, right? As marketers, we see a channel that works and then we squeeze it until it is absolutely exhausted. And then ultimately we wait for the next huge paradigm shift. So we aren't at that point with AI yet because AI is, you know, pretty good at language and getting there with imagery, but it's still got the evolution of video as well. You know, I think within the next sort of 12 months we'll start to see really impressive— I mean, in fact, I saw Reel's generative AI engine, which is just phenomenal, frankly. But having those available at enterprise level versus having them available at sort of consumer level are 2 different things. And I think we will get to that point really quickly. And at that point, as consumers, as people, as humans, we'll start to say, okay, so actually, I just want to talk to someone.

It's so funny that you said that because it mimics exactly what I've just presented. I presented an AI presentation to the speaking industry. And how we're going to see like typically in the speaking industry, the barrier to entry is very low anyway. But now, it's going to be made even lower because anybody can use generative AI to generate their content. They could go up on a stage, become a thought regurgitator. People will at some point go and they'll start figuring it out because everybody's going to be talking the same. And so, it's going to change I think how We focus on the intentionality we bring, I think, to our jobs because we do want to be able to say, I am unique and here's the value I'm going to bring for you. And to your point, this window that we're talking about now seems to be quite small. Because to your point, the minute everybody targets me by name, after a while, it's going to get old and that will no longer work. So then, it becomes what's next iteration for that, right?

Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're 100% right. I think that, you know, what is the timeframe? I don't know. I'm working as an agency owner to an 18-month timeframe. I believe that all digital agencies of my size will need to fundamentally— well, firstly, we've got 18 months of making hay. You know, we can Like, we can do great stuff in the next 18 months. And a lot of our growth is because of that. Because essentially what AI has allowed us to do is to scale our business significantly faster than we would have been able to in the past. But after that point, we need to have a very clear strategic plan as to how we will evolve beyond AI. And we need to be in the process of executing that. So I think we've got 18 months. I hope we've got 2 and a half years. But You know, it came onto the world so quickly. It evolved so much faster. And so, who really knows?

And it's still evolving. One of the metaphors I used in my presentation was a year ago, like last November, we were in the Wright Brothers stage of flight. And then, 6 months in, we were in the airliner. And this year, we're in the space shuttle era. And We're like months away from being in the Starship era of generative AI and all the different things. It's just happening so very quickly.

Yeah. And I think you're right. And I think that a lot of corporates, larger organizations will be slow to adapt. They just always are. It's a natural facet of being a larger organization. Humans in groups tend to evolve slower than those who are in the wilderness by themselves and have to evolve sort of quicker. And we see that in almost everything in human behavior. Like if you look, if you go down the streets in New York, they still build houses with 5 or 6 steps in front of them because in the 1800s, horses used to leave their muck on the road and you needed space. But that's a behavior that died 100 years ago and yet we still do it, right?

Yeah.

So I tend to think of large corporates with that sort of heuristic. But for the rest of us, particularly for your audience, there are huge opportunities in front of them right now, which they should take advantage of.

So, in your experience, in your realm, what are some of the misconceptions around AI in marketing? What are you hearing this day and age?

I think a lot of the misconceptions— firstly, I think there's a lot of inertia. People don't necessarily understand the value that it brings right now and what you can do with it. So, you know, let's just take a real example. 12 months ago, even with AI, the first generative versions of AI through Writesonic and other tools, we were able to produce for clients 8 to 10 pieces of written content of a decent standard. They still needed a copywriter to go through them every month. We can today produce 80 pieces of written content, blogs or whatever, for that same client with the same resource. So I think that many companies simply aren't taking advantage of what's there right now, and or maybe aren't aware of what the advantages are to using it right now. I think another misconception is that all AI content as it's written today is generic. It's almost like cut and paste. You know, it's taking things from the internet and cutting and pasting. But that's simply not true. You know, you can train your AI to write in a semblance of a way that you write using a cadence of writing that you use. You can train AI on very specific things like your brand guidelines or, you know, the history of your founder. You can really train AI to be really quite specific. And as of today, the layperson who reads content won't necessarily know that it is AI written. As marketers who use AI every day, it's quite clear to us. But it's becoming more difficult, particularly with the last update from OpenAI.

Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, somebody wrote a book. She used it as a sample of what you could do with AI. But yet, when you read it, I mean, to me, it's clear that this is artificially generated. And part of the challenge is that in the content that you're reading, are there any personal stories?

Yes.

Because that's one thing that AI is not really great at doing yet. And when it does, it's amazing how much it mimics stories across different platforms with different kind of like— you realize that there's a flow and a formula. that AI is using that just doesn't happen in normal human writing. So.

Yeah, yeah, you're quite right. Like, if I give you an example of how we train an AI, so this is almost a perfect example, right? So we're going to talk for the next half an hour or whatever, and someone in the team at the end of this process will export this video and they'll use another AI tool called otter.ai, and they'll take out the entire transcript and they'll then move that into our GPT, which is specifically for writing content that would come from my voice and it will train based on this conversation. So any personal stories that I use, it now has in its memory bank that it will use in the future. So again, how people are using the AIs is interesting. But I also think that— are you on LinkedIn? I am, yeah. Do you engage regularly? Yeah. So LinkedIn is the most curious platform to me because of all of the platforms that should really have gone all in on personal connection and events, it should have been LinkedIn. Yet, it was the first of the platforms to integrate AI content. You can write your post using AI within the LinkedIn platform, which I just thought was crazy. Like, of all of the platforms that should be focusing on personal connection, it should have been LinkedIn.

Interesting, eh? I do know that being a consultant for small businesses and seeing a lot of SMEs and kind of how they run. You mentioned the bigger our teams are, the slower we are to adapt things. But what risks do you think businesses face by clinging to traditional marketing methods in this new era?

Speed. That is the main issue that anyone who sort of sticks to the status quo will face— speed. Now ultimately, any startup requires speed. It requires the speed to fail. I always say, you got to fail and you got to accept that that is a natural consequence A natural part of the steps to success are failures. And the quicker you can go through those evolutions of failure, the quicker you achieve success, whatever that really means. Yeah. So AI is just, used correctly, can be a catalyst for that. It can be a catalyst to help you speed up those cycles so that you get through those experiments quicker, so that you get the learnings quicker, so that you can evolve your business quicker. So that's the main thing that they're missing out on. Now, At the same time, in highly competitive markets, they aren't alone. Startups are just not alone. And so, you know, your next-door neighbor who's in the same industry as you, also starting in his home office, maybe part-time because he works a full-time job, he is using AI and he'll scale through those cycles of failure much faster than you and therefore get traction in his business much faster.

Amazing! And so, this idea of time, I mean obviously, time is money. So now, it's also cheaper to leverage and to build to your point that jump over that failure is going to cost us a lot less than what it cost us 4 years ago.

Absolutely! Not only will it cost less, it will also help, used correctly, it will also help you avoid failures that have already happened in other places. So, one of the ways that I try whenever we hire new people to go through through a training program. And one of the parts of the training is to befriend the AI. And we mean that quite literally. Make it your friend and use it for everyday questions. Everything like, how do I make béchamel? To, you know, what should my BMI be? Everything that you would ask of a friend or of a neighbor, ask it of the AI. And it is a data bank of so much information. And yeah, it's not 100% accurate, but— It's there to help you sort of understand what are the potential failures beforehand. We have a board in our office called the Experiments Board, and a large part of digital marketing is, you know, you try and it's sort of you fail, but you improve and you fail, but you improve. So we run experiments for clients, maybe 80 experiments a month. What we've started doing now is we've started to explain the experiment to the AI first. and then ask it, what are potential things that could fail within this experiment? And that allows us to make the experiment itself more robust, because we understand, oh yeah, actually, that might happen. Okay, let's just change this copy to that. Let's change that image to that. And it sort of, you know, it allows you to resolve for some of those potential pitfalls much earlier in the process. And therefore, like you said, you know, we're just much quicker.

It's almost like you're stepping into the middle of the game rather than at the beginning of the game. It's amazing. Are you coming across a lot of pushback? Are there a lot of companies out there underestimating AI and the pace of AI's evolution within your industry?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the agency industry has only just started to evolve from— have you ever seen Mad Men?

Yes.

Right. So like the agency industry has only just started the evolution from the Mad Men era. And frankly, in large corporates, that era still exists. So there is a lot of pushback and frankly, there has been a lot of pushback for a long time just on all digital methodologies. What we found though is that companies like ours that are adopting sort of blank sheets of paper and sort of building from scratch, we're able to move much, much faster than our competitors. So at a very simple level, when there's an RFQ, we are able to respond normally within 6 hours, however detailed the RFQ is, because let's say it was a governmental RFQ, 60 pages. Okay? Well, I have news. I hope it's not a shock to anyone who writes these RFQs. We don't read them. We just don't, right? We get to, what's your budget? What are your objectives? And that's what we build up. Okay, but now what we're able to do is we're able to train the AI and say, here's an RFQ. How would you respond?

Yep.

Knowing our business model, knowing our business, what's the best way for us to respond to it? Yeah.

Correct. And we don't take that as gospel. Exactly. And the key is though, Marc, is that you don't take it as— it's not gospel. It's not like set in stone. It's just a guide. It's just a guide. It's just asking for advice from another person. I may have a problem next week, right? And I know that if I send you an email and say, Marc, I've got this issue with my business, what do you think? I know that you'll take the time to respond to me. And that's exactly how an AI should be treated too. It's just someone to give you some advice. I'm under no obligation to take the AI's advice, but at least it'll allow me to think in a slightly different way.

Yeah, it really is a magical time because the opportunity is there. And I do know, like for instance, my mom who loves to tune into my show and watch the show, she has a very negative kind of perception of AI that it's going to be used for wicked deeds, right? And some people would even say, hey, maybe this is cheating. But it's no different than the cheating we did way back when we went from punch cards to keyboards. And all of a sudden, we didn't need as many office staff in order to process information because now everybody had a computer in front of their face.

Of course, 100%. And yeah, like if you think back to, I remember earlier in my career, I used to have to fax 30-page contracts to clients. I used to fax them. stand there and then suddenly I could just email them. So yeah, these evolutions happen. And look, to some extent, your mother's right. Hello, mother, if you're watching today. All technology can be used for evil, right?

Yeah.

All technology can be used for bad. Such a great idea of email turned into a way of spamming people. But that doesn't make— the tool itself is not inherently evil. It is the user And how they use the tool that defines whether something is good or bad. Yeah.

And then, it's up to us as human beings. I mean, we talked before we went live about this idea about critical thinking, about how we have to leverage our own critical thinking to say, to ask the questions, who, what, where, when, why, how, and make sure that the information we're getting and put checks and balances in place. But it's no different. It's no different than the invention of the car. Yes, somebody can get into a car and plow down a bunch of That's evil. But on most sides, we have hundreds of billions of cars on the planet that are being used in a respectful, proper manner.

100%. You're absolutely right.

I'd love to get into some strategies that businesses can use because I do know that people are slow to adopt. It's frightful. The fear of change is enormous. So, I'd like to get into some strategies that businesses can use to adapt to the future of marketing. And we'll get to that. Right after this.

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Welcome back! I'm speaking with the founder and CEO of Kush Digital, Aziz Musa. Aziz, what are the short-term opportunities available to businesses today who want to leverage the power of AI in their marketing? What should they be taking advantage of right this moment?

They should all have an account on ChatGPT. And assuming they can afford the $20 a month, they should have the premium version. And the first step is to stop using Google. You have a search question, ask ChatGPT. Okay. Now, a lot of people, and we alluded to this slightly, a lot of people assumed that Google would start to penalize AI content. Okay, so if you created blog posts that were supported in any way by AI, it's not hard for an algorithm to spot the AI exists, the AI content exists. So why didn't they penalize that content? And the reason is because Google themselves have their own AI, Bard, and that will continue to evolve too. Today, right now, ask your AI about you and about your business. It only— it's only trained on the internet. So if I were to ask, um, the AI— and by the way, I did do this, yeah— so I was to say, um, tell me about Marc Haine. Now, as it happens, Marc has a very widespread presence online, and so there was a lot of information that came back. Okay, well, that's a really good thing for you and for your sort of industry, because in your industry, because it means that your reach is really high, if we were to use sort of marketing lingo.

Mm-hmm.

So then do the same thing of yourself and your business and see, does the AI even know that you exist? Okay. If it doesn't, then you can start to ask it, how can I build my awareness in this target demographic? What are the cheap, simple things that I can do today that would allow me to reach more customers and start talking to it like you would talk to a business advisor.

I love that. That is so— it's such a simple way to get started. And even if you are the biggest pessimist on the planet, you're still going to get feedback that again, you can read through it. You can take a look at it and say, gosh darn it! I think this makes sense.

100%. And the learning curve is so, so, so shallow. Like you will Get into into ChatGPT. Like my mother, who just had her 70th birthday, now uses ChatGPT to write her meal plans for the week. She tells ChatGPT her macros from her MyFitnessPal, and she says these are the things that I like, and it will write her meal plan, and it will give her a shopping list, and it will give her recipes for any. thing that she's never cooked in the past. And she's 70.

Yeah, yeah. It's that easy. It's that easy. So, strategies for businesses to adapt the future of marketing where the demand for personalization and personal interactions are in high demand. How do we start leveraging that component of it to the outreach that we make it that we now can start looking at if we do the search The question, the prompt on how do I service my ideal clients? How do I get them to see me? What advice would you get as far as strategies around that?

It really depends where you are in like the evolution of your business. Generally speaking though, for most startups, there are 2 objectives. One is sort of grow awareness, which let's call that a medium-term objective because the first objective is get your client, get your first clients, right? Because you're chasing toward breakeven and you probably have a cash runway. And so there's sort of 2 objectives there. For the first objective, for the reach, you know, be active across the channels, create content, distribute content. That's, I think that's always been and kind of at least for the next number of years, will continue to be really important. But for the second one, which is getting to your clients quickly, I think, and I noticed your book Lights! Camera! Action!, and I think that the lessons I'm sure within there are around crafting a story and delivering that in a really passionate way that people will remember. Okay? Back when I was doing my MBA, there was this concept of the elevator pitch, and it's kind of disappeared from the lexicon. But I think it's more important now than ever before to really work on crafting your elevator pitch and not just using the words, but delivering the performance, delivering the elevator pitch so that it is memorable with personal stories. And then You will be surprised how far those stories travel.

It changes the purpose of the elevator pitch, I think. Because first of all, we've never had to do a pitch in an elevator because everybody's too busy doing this. But to your point, it changes the purpose of the elevator pitch to being this very succinct statement that you're just going to vomit all over people. to now turning into when somebody asks you what you're doing and how are you doing it. What are you all about? You start off with something like, well, you know how. And then, you start with the problem statement and you start understanding. You start giving them back their problem so that it starts resonating. Am I on point there?

Well, 100%. And you definitely know more about this than me. And I think one of the things I gave a speech recently and the aim of the speech wasn't for lead generation. It was for just awareness of a very specific issue. And the start of my speech, everybody went up, all the speakers went up and they had their slides and their presentation and the lighting was— and I asked for a single spotlight and a black background. And of course the organizers were just like, oh my God, what's gonna happen? And I started my speech with, war isn't as bad as you think it is. It's a million times worse.

Yeah.

And instantly, everybody's engaged. And now we can tell the story. And you're never— as long as you keep that story moving at the right pace, at the right cadence, you're gonna drag them all the way through and you're gonna get that message across. And unsurprisingly, people remember the story, right? And they therefore enact an action that I wanted them to enact. And that's what we do as marketers. But as a founder, as a startup founder, if you haven't learned the art of performance, you really should.

Absolutely. And that goes for anybody. Anybody who's in business, understand the art of performance. Brilliant! Aziz, this is really fascinating. And I'm sure there are people like right now, we have quite a few people on this call. Nobody's asked questions yet. But if somebody wanted to reach out to you and say, I want to pick your brain. I want to work with you. How can they get in contact with you?

The easiest way to reach me is LinkedIn. So, Aziz Musa on LinkedIn, or you can email me aziz@kush.digital is also fine. So, either of those ways. And I'm always really willing to help people if I can. If I have the knowledge or I have some advice, I'm always willing to do that. I think it's kind of incumbent Much like you do this. I have my own podcast, Coffee with Kush. And all I do is talk about sort of the challenges in digital and helping people sort of shortcut those issues.

Yeah, yeah. This idea of strategies that people can be using right now. The number one strategy, just start using it. Start asking questions. Start treating it like it's a trusted advisor that you're going to take with a grain of salt. Use critical thinking. Are there anything else, any other ways you think that we can get people over the hump of uncertainty as they start exploring this?

I think the easiest way to get over the hump of uncertainty is realize this truth. You are already consuming AI-written content. whether you know it or not isn't relevant. It's already happened. So it's okay if you make a decision that you are fundamentally opposed to AI, that's perfectly fine. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't take advantage of it right in front of you right now. And by the way, this period of time, like I said before, it is limited. This is not— the heyday is not going to last forever. And I honestly think it's 18 months, maybe 2 years. But Take advantage today because it's not going to exist in a couple of years' time.

Yeah. And then, when you do start adopting it, when it's too late, you're behind. So behind that it's not going to end up working for you for what you wanted to do. So, it's really important to get started. Can we discuss the impact of AI beyond marketing? What are some of your ideas about what you're seeing as far as the world in general, the business community in general?

Well, let's go wider than that. I don't think that there is an industry that will not be impacted by AI. And I mean, that was the seismic shift element. So the paradigm shift has happened, and the seismic shift— imagine a world where when you have an ailment, God forbid, you go to a doctor and the triage, you know, not at the moment you're doing a triage with a nurse or something, You go to a triage and there is a machine in front of you that asks you questions. And those questions are very specific to you because it has all of your medical history. And then it essentially chucks out a theoretical diagnosis. And the doctor, his only job is to confirm that diagnosis and the treatment. And we say that like that's a sci-fi movie. I say that, and even when I'm hearing myself, it's like, that's a sci-fi movie. That already exists. I've seen a hospital in Israel that already does this. This isn't theoretical anymore. This is happening now. Okay, so lawyers, you know, how many lawyers, their entire jobs are just entirely transforming now? Writing contracts has essentially become a task that's outsourceable to an AI. If you think of an industry the odds are that it will be transformed or at least massively impacted by AI. In the wider business context, what that really means is huge new opportunities. Huge new opportunities. Because do you have the Yellow Pages in Canada?

The Yellow Pages? My Yellow Pages are sitting on a shelf from 1980-something. And for some reason, the pages turned more yellow.

So I remember we would always get the Yellow Pages and it was such an important part of every household in the UK to have the Yellow Pages.

Yeah.

Right. And then overnight the relevance of the Yellow Pages just entirely disappeared and people thought, oh my gosh, people are going to lose their jobs at the Yellow Pages. And actually, I know the company that bought the Yellow Pages and they entirely went online. They didn't lose their jobs. They just transformed what they were doing. And I worked in the publishing industry that used to print magazines like New Scientist magazine. And again, it just all shifted online. So the trick isn't to worry about what negative impacts AI will have. The trick is, as an entrepreneur, to ask, how will this impact my industry and how can I benefit? Because there's always a benefit. There's always a benefit. There's always a way. And if you are at level 1,000 on this, then you can ask the AI itself, how do you think you're going to impact my industry?

Yeah. And chances are if you do that right this second, it'll come up with some ideas that you hadn't considered. It's really interesting, the hesitation to jump on new technology. I always go back to like the first episode of Downton Abbey if you've ever watched it.

Yes.

Where Mary goes in to see Granny and Granny's still got candles burning. And she's like, Granny, why don't you turn on the power? We installed electricity. And Granny's like, ah, it'll probably set fire to the whole house. There's gonna be fire in my walls. And I get that sense when I talk to people about AI, about the fear component to it. But this idea that there's always opportunity and where we're struggling with things like Like not enough people in the workforce to be able to cater to the jobs that we need done. When healthcare is being pushed in so many different directions, all of a sudden, this technology comes in. And if we leverage it right, it could be like a tool that speeds up diagnostic. It increases patient care across the board. And like just my mother had a blood test and I was able to go online and actually get the results of the test. So now that we go to the doctor, we no longer have to wait for the doctor to tell us what we need to do. The next conversation just automatically goes to, what's the plan?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right. Resistance to change is a natural facet of who we are. I mean, stability is sort of the holy grail of human beings. We seek it all of our lives. We want that moment of stability. I think the difference in this era versus let's say, 30 years ago is that those changes 30 years ago were coming every decade, maybe every half decade.

Right.

And now we're seeing changes every month. And one of them, I was talking to a colleague recently who was asking, what do you think is the most important facet of, or personality trait of an entrepreneur? And Historically, I've always had the answer grit, the ability to tough something out. And I think that that probably still holds true. But I think now my number one greatest asset of an entrepreneur is a willingness to suspend ego and just learn, just learn, just accept learning. And yeah, I think that that's kind of the number one facet. And so often, if you really look at successful entrepreneurs, there's a reason why people say, oh, he's such a nice guy. He's such a nice guy because he doesn't really have an agenda. He's willing and ready to learn from the people around him. And that, I think, is probably the greatest asset that you can have as an entrepreneur nowadays.

Yeah, yeah. We've talked a lot about a lot of things that we can do with AI. I'd like to talk about some of the cautionaries behind it. And I'd like to get to that right after this.

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We are having an absolute phenomenal discussion about leveraging the power of artificial intelligence in marketing, but more so in connecting with our ideal clients. Aziz, when we start thinking about this new technology, we mentioned that this window could be 18 months, 2 years before it's going to get old, overused, flogged to death, and we're going to be waiting for the next iteration of something to create that person-to-person connection. What are some of the cautionaries about adopting this new technology now? What are some things we should be aware of?

AI lies. It is a liar. And, you know, I've seen it myself many times. You know, I'll be researching something for a white paper and I'll ask it to reference and it will just make up references. It will make up references on the fly. So don't believe it all the time because it lies. I think that's the first and the most important thing. To say. I also think that I've seen many people who are just entirely reliant on AI for producing their content. And I want to make it clear that myself personally, and then us as a company, we use AI as a support tool to help us deliver the end product. But the end product is a human product, whether that's a blog post or a social media post or a lead generation campaign or whatever it is. The end product is human. But the support behind that is AI. And I think that it's very easy to take that human element away and just say, oh, well, I'll just let AI deal with all of this. And there are tools, there are workflow tools that are entirely AI-driven. But I just think that that is so dangerous because AI doesn't have— it doesn't have all of the knowledge, right? So if you're doing a LinkedIn outreach campaign using whatever, Dripify or something, it doesn't know that you had an issue with that colleague who's still your connection on LinkedIn, but happens to be in the target demographic. So it will still contact him. Do you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

So there's still like that human element is really critical. It cannot be replaced. I think how we use it will change, but it cannot be replaced, the human element. And so I definitely caution people against being entirely reliant on AI.

And that would just smack of laziness, right? I don't think when it comes down to AI, I don't think it gives us permission to start being lazy. I think more than anything else, like just like if I ask you for advice and then you tell me something, the fact that I take your advice is because I trust you. You've proven yourself worthy to me and that you haven't let me down before. However, when it's a brand new relationship, it's like, okay, well, that's great advice. I'm just gonna go And I'm going to fact-check it. I'm going to go and check and see how viable this is. I'm going to do my own research. And we need to do the same thing with AI as well. Yeah, big liar. It's a stupid liar. Anything else?

I think that just, I guess my final point on that is that you're quite right. Like, you can't expect AI to enable your laziness, right? As an entrepreneur, as a startup owner, the thing that you have above your competitors, particularly if they're bigger companies, is your willingness to work harder than them. That's it. Ultimately, if you have the willingness to push yourself further than can be reasonably expected of you as a human being, then that's a massive advantage. Now, AI can accelerate how much you can get done in a day, but you still need to get that stuff done, right? You still need to do the doing. And so I think that that's probably the most important thing of all, right? Ultimately, nobody ever started a startup and was successful by sitting down waiting for the result. It's about the relentless effort that you put into it and your willingness to be totally unreasonable with yourself and your own expectations.

And that's true for anything I think in business. I mean, you became the youngest CEO in the UK, like for a traded company in the UK. You didn't do that by saying, hey, I think I have an idea. Why don't we get a whole bunch of people together and start brainstorming whether this is a great idea, right? I mean, you had to move in order to make stuff happen.

100%. And I think that I was willing to do that. I was willing to push myself further and faster than the people around me, actually. And actually, whenever I moved companies, I was always conscious of that. I wanted to know, okay, who's the top performer here? And what can I learn from this person? And so I was just, even at a young age, in my early 20s, I was just soaking up so much information, but I was just unreasonable with myself. I was entirely unreasonable with myself, and I've pushed myself. And yeah, I just think that that's irreplaceable. You can't mimic that. No AI can mimic that. That just is. And so if you hold on to that, and you're willing to push yourself and be unreasonable with yourself, then yeah, that's the— I think that's an important facet of successful entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I love that. This has been such a fabulous conversation. Before we wrap up, do you have any Last thoughts about what we're talking about today, especially in the implementation of using AI within the context of people's business to market themselves, to reach out, to create that human connection?

Yeah, just once you've started the process, I would ask that, and I do this quite regularly, I would ask the AI, okay, what should I do? What do you think I should do? Give me a list of 10 lead generation ideas that I could implement and test today, and then do the doing. Yeah, so don't just— this isn't an exercise in knowledge gathering. It's an exercise in accelerating learning. And so if you can use the AI to help you ideate and then execute really quickly, that's super valuable. But what I will say is that, like we've mentioned a number of times, there is like a lifespan to this. What there is not a lifespan to is human connection. And I think we've gone past the era of content is king, and we're going to move into the era of connection is king. And I think that human connection is going to be more important over the next decade than ever before, even pre-internet. I think now with the access of so much information, access to so much information, human connection is going to supersede everything. And so Don't be afraid of, you know, get the advice. Okay, if you want to do, if you want to cold call, that's fine. Get the advice from the AI. You know, how could I engage people in a friendly way on a cold call? And maybe even help it modify your script or whatever it is. But then do the doing and don't be afraid of doing the human connection element. I love that.

You know, and when you're thinking about all the mental wellness and mental well-being that we're hearing in the news constantly, Especially in the realms of seniors where loneliness now is its own pandemic. I think you're absolutely right. I think we're going to get to a point where the world is just going to demand, I want to be with people. I want human contact. I don't want to deal with your VA. I don't want to deal with your secretary. I want to be face-to-face with you because you're the person who holds all the cards for me. So yeah.

You're right. You're 100% right, I think.

Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Sure. I'm easiest to get a hold of on LinkedIn, Aziz Musa, A-Z-I-Z M-U-S-A. Or you can just email me directly at aziz@kush.digital.

Thank you very much for— this has been such a thrilling conversation. I can't believe we've blown through 53 minutes just like that. I want to thank you so much for sharing your passion and your expertise with us. This has been truly Truly brilliant.

It's been my pleasure and I've taken a lot from it. So, thank you so much, Marc.

Thank you. Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? This was a great conversation. But as always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. It's the one marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It's in the show notes. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment or review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did you learn anything? Bigger yet, is there anything that you'd like me to uncover in future episodes? I loved having you here. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Marc Haine. I hope that you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you Dare to be the exception.