AI for Business: Turning Potential into Reality with Pascal Fintoni
Ep 03 | AI for Business: Turning Potential into Reality
AI is everywhere, but what does it actually mean for your business? How can you use it effectively without losing your personal touch?
In this episode of The Horizon Podcast, host Ben Bradford is joined by Pascal Fintoni, a digital marketing and AI expert with over 30 years of experience. Together, they dive into how businesses can integrate AI, avoid common pitfalls, and use it as both an admin assistant and a consultant to reclaim time, enhance strategy and improve your outputs.
Pascal also shares insights on AI’s role in international trade, from market research to language learning, and discusses a new AI for Exporters Masterclass, co-created with Norma Foster, to help businesses apply AI practically.
Resources:
Pascal’s App Cheat Sheet: https://www.flipsnack.com/5DDC5688B7A/apps-to-boost-2025-1/full-view.html
Sign up for the AI for Exporters Masterclass: www.teesglobal.co.uk/ai-masterclass
Listen Here: https://the-horizon-podcast.captivate.fm
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6YNQKalOt6g807RJFRhNA9?si=959b722c7cfa4039
Listen on Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/95d9193a-b7c7-4051-bf86-ec8dbc8cb56d/the-horizon-podcast
Horizon Magazine
Ben
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-bradford-73701a15a/
Pascal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascalfintoni/
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Transcript
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Horizon Podcast, the podcast that takes you further than Horizon magazine while still bringing you the same amazing insight and guidance and support from some of our fantastic contributors and specialists.
Speaker A:Today we're going to be exploring the buzzword AI.
Speaker A:But what does it actually mean for you, for your business?
Speaker A:How can you incorporate it?
Speaker A:What potential does it have?
Speaker A:And how can you benefit from that potential?
Speaker A:By using some of the fantastic platforms and apps that are out there and available on the market.
Speaker A:It's going to be fun.
Speaker A:So let's dive right in.
Speaker A:Enjoy the show.
Speaker A:Hello again and thank you for joining us.
Speaker A:First, I must apologize because the sun is coming out, everyone's saying it's suddenly spring, and in someone's cruel joke, I've suddenly decided to come down with a bit of a cold.
Speaker A:So I'm sorry that I might sound croaky and apologies especially to you guys who are watching this, because you probably get to see my red nose as well.
Speaker A:But thankfully you're not here to listen much today.
Speaker A:Thankfully, you're all here to hear from the brilliant expertise of Pascal Fintoni, who I know he's a modest guy, but it really is.
Speaker A:I hope he doesn't mind me calling him an expert, a true expert when it comes to AI and digital marketing.
Speaker A:And I think with 30 years of experience in sales and marketing and last two years, really kind of just jumping and diving right into AI and what AI is.
Speaker A:And, you know, I was not one who was thinking about AI two years ago.
Speaker A:I can, I can tell you that much.
Speaker A:So thank you very much for, for joining Pascal.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:And I think your voice is absolutely fine.
Speaker B:This is perfect for radio.
Speaker B:I think you should do a showreel and send it to, you know, a local radio station.
Speaker B:But thanks for the introduction.
Speaker B:And you know, what was interesting is I had to update my profile recently on LinkedIn, my media series that I signed for speaking gigs.
Speaker B:And it was rather distressing to go from what I used to have 25 plus years experience to now a proper 30, because literally last year it was 30 years since my first website project.
Speaker B:I got involved in digital ever since.
Speaker B:And thank you very much for the accolade of expertise.
Speaker B:You write one, it can obviously be very, very modest.
Speaker B:And when it comes to a.
Speaker B:What is interesting is we are all more or less at the same kind of level.
Speaker B:People may remember.
Speaker B: tGPT was released in November: Speaker B:It's just very, very new.
Speaker B:And as we'll discuss, you and I, Ben, that's not particularly good at explaining itself that makes any sense.
Speaker B:I think AI needs a better pair PR agent.
Speaker B:But suddenly once like as I played with ChatGPT and it was kind of amusing, I also tested, you know, speaking to ChatGPT in French to see whether or not you could cope with that.
Speaker B: nd then about maybe spring of: Speaker B:Because if, if there isn't any that I can pass, I'm the busy guy, right?
Speaker B:But what would be the practical application for a small team, no matter the size of your organization, particularly in charge of marketing and comms?
Speaker B:And is there a contribution of AI to help you with your strategy, help you with international marketing, help you with different facets?
Speaker B:Could be SEO, could be social media.
Speaker B: I spent the vast majority of: Speaker B:And I can really look for whether or not the claim that were made at the time were in indeed valid.
Speaker B:But also 20 was the release of different platforms.
Speaker B:So ChatGPT was the first one that all those came along.
Speaker B:And I felt that by early 24 I had something to say and then launched the first master classes.
Speaker B:And honestly, Ben, it's just gone absolutely crazy.
Speaker B:But I don't think it's just the AI.
Speaker B:I think it's the application of AI within a marketing and sales context that people find interesting.
Speaker A:I think that's perfect example you being modest by saying we're all on the same level when it comes to AI.
Speaker A:But one point you made there that I quite liked is that AI doesn't market itself very well.
Speaker A:And you're right, a lot of people will just say AI can do, has the potential to do anything and everything, which is great, sounds great, but from a business point of view, that doesn't actually really help me say, well, what actually no can it do?
Speaker A:What can it do for me today and now?
Speaker A:So I suppose starting very simply, we know that it can be used as a bit of like a research tool or to help write content, but just run through a couple of those and you already gave us a couple, but a couple of areas there, you think kind of I can really today Help businesses and make businesses life easier.
Speaker B:The starting point really is to challenge the language and I despair sometime the language of tech and digital marketing.
Speaker B:I mean, AI is not as bad as SEO and all the others that came before, but it's still meaningless in a way or so meaningful that it is meaningless.
Speaker B:And I think we need to challenge that to begin with and then really use our superpower, which is what we have, all of us from a very young age, which is the power of imagination.
Speaker B:Because what AI requires of us is to imagine a different way of working that's not been available to and it's, it's not easy.
Speaker B:And I want people to really be kind to themselves.
Speaker B:You know, don't give yourself a hard time at all if you think that you're still kind of, you feel like you're lagging behind when it comes to AI, because like I said, it's not been particularly well explained, well promoted.
Speaker B:I think the media have done a big job as well in kind of selling you the stories that and finally Terminators are going to take over Sky Networks.
Speaker B:But AI is got that power of making us reflect in our conversion so far science and fiction, which is absolutely fascinating, but it's been a conversation that has lasted forever.
Speaker B:I think if you go back to the, after the second World War and all this kind of sci fi books and the sci fi novels and this idea of reflecting how we're going to kind of coexist and collaborate with AI has been part of what we've looked at through literature and movies.
Speaker B:So for me the starting point is to kind of understand that it is not like a search engine, even though it looks like a search engine and it's not like a chatbot, even though it looks like a chatbot.
Speaker B:So to begin with, it looks the wrong way for people to understand how it's used.
Speaker B:And if you look at the platform themselves, whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, Codepalton, we'll move on to the differences if you want to.
Speaker B:But if you are like a first time visitor to any of those platforms, there is nothing there to inspire you to really use it in a way that's going to be meaningful to your business, as you pointed out.
Speaker B:So using the power of imagination, what I recommend people do is to imagine and invent that they are recruiting new employees in the business.
Speaker B:And each employee will have a very specific function, but that employee will also learn and grow and get better with time.
Speaker B:So it's not like a static moment in time where you start using ChatGPT today and then in a way in six months or 12 months time, what you'll do with it would be the same because you're going to learn and become a operator of AI, but it will learn from you as well.
Speaker B:And for me there are two avenues.
Speaker B:The one is the admin assistant.
Speaker B:So imagine that you bring someone who's an admin assistant but decided that they can multitask so they can do something that has multi steps potentially or they can do more than one task throughout the week that you have.
Speaker B:So using your power imagination, you have to imagine that there is a full induction process, a process for the admin assistants to kind of come in.
Speaker B:You've got to jot down really.
Speaker B:I would go as far as a job description or at least you know, a scope of work you can change yourself in becoming a team leader, whereby even though that's not your function officially in the business necessarily or you are already a team leader but you're going to be recruiting additional assistant for, for what we call the, the time thieves.
Speaker B:You know, the task that you could do yourself but you wish they would take less time.
Speaker B:And they fall into three categories really research.
Speaker B:But I do mean in depth, very detailed, very ambitious research.
Speaker B:Because what AI can do, many people have played with it now is really get to a position where it can scan and consult a large, large amount of information, much more than we can manage by doing a simple Google search.
Speaker B:So in depth, detailed, very ambitious research is one of it.
Speaker B:But also present the information in a way that suits you.
Speaker B:The next thing is that the admin assistant can rewrite and reshape what's already there.
Speaker B:So perhaps on your to do list forever you've been meaning to get back to the website and change the content to suit a particular market.
Speaker B:Perhaps for a while you've been thinking about improving your LinkedIn profile kind of relevancy to the markets you're targeting with the support of your advisors.
Speaker B:You've got all that thing on the to do list that you know you've got to do, you could do, but time is against you.
Speaker B:So the admin assistant, as I would call it can help you rewrite by understanding what you're looking for.
Speaker B:And then the third one is to repurpose the information you've got into different formats and this is what something people like to do.
Speaker B:So from this podcast, for example, to get in the text, from the text then coming an article or from text to images, from images and they kind of reshape and re change the format so that Your communications efforts are in line with your customers preferences.
Speaker B:So these are the three categories of work.
Speaker B:Now the argument being therefore that if you can get your admin assistant to take things off your plate, you save time, you reclaim time.
Speaker B:So let's say for what you wanted to do would take you normally three to four hours.
Speaker B:It can be done in an hour and a half.
Speaker B:Then you have reclaim to the tune of three hours back.
Speaker B:So what do you do with that time and what you do with that time then you use a different form of AI, which is an AI to be your dedicated consultant and mentor.
Speaker B:And what you want to do here with AI is start to introduce in your business in the context of marketing and sales, some activities that you've never done before.
Speaker B:They're going to be hard hitting, they're going to be helping you grow the business.
Speaker B:Because to date what's been limitation is that aspirations to do things differently.
Speaker B:But time is against you or understanding and knowledge was against you.
Speaker B:So what you can do then is bring in the AI consultant.
Speaker B:And the AI consultant will do three things for you.
Speaker B:It will critique what's already there.
Speaker B:That could be your strategy, that could be your action plan, that could be, you know, I'll show you some examples where you can use AI to review your website and that kind of things.
Speaker B:You could critique what's already there and give you expert opinion about what you ought to do about it.
Speaker B:But you can go beyond that.
Speaker B:So okay, so thanks for the input my beloved AI consultant, but I still don't understand how to do that.
Speaker B:So then you can ask the consultant is to break it down for you into bite size elements or give you an action plan.
Speaker B:And you can also say for example, I'm terribly sorry but I only have two hours a week to do any of that stuff.
Speaker B:So can you then design for me an action plan that suits a two hour week time budget?
Speaker B:And that really is where you start to get something really quite exciting.
Speaker B:Critique therefore is part of what the consultant will do for you.
Speaker B:The next thing that you can learn something brand new.
Speaker B:So self study is also what the AI can do.
Speaker B:It could be market study, it could be studying a different form of sales or marketing.
Speaker B:People saying I wish I could do that.
Speaker B:For example, they want to do more video marketing or they want to do better with regard to lead generation and networking internationally, that kind of things.
Speaker B:But I'm not sure where to start.
Speaker B:Well, the AI consultant can put together a study program and a training program, even points to resources and so on and so forth.
Speaker B:So that you can do that.
Speaker B:And finally what the AI consultant can do for you, which I know is always the very appealing side of AI, which is why on purpose, in true mentoring and training fashion, I kept it last, is the co creation.
Speaker B:So creating something from nothing.
Speaker B:So I need a new policy, I need a new press release, I need to be able to put together a video script, I need to do a number of things, but I've never done this before.
Speaker B:I don't know where to start.
Speaker B:Then the AI consultant can take you through that journey.
Speaker B:The last point I would make, therefore, as part of my journey of testing and testing AI quite substantially, is two realizations.
Speaker B:Number one, it takes time actually to work with AI in a meaningful way.
Speaker B:So my recommendation would be that if you want to do some project, whether using the admin assistant or the consultant, I would book it in a diary.
Speaker B:So it's not something really designed so well to do rushed jobs.
Speaker B:Very tempting.
Speaker B:Listen, I still do it sometimes I'm caught out and oh please help me do that.
Speaker B:But you're better off if you can say, I want to work on the strategy for the business, I want to work on this content, I want to work on this new process, I want to work on something using the power imagination.
Speaker B:I want you to imagine that you've made an appointment with a real person.
Speaker B:So two things, you're not going to vouch yourself and turn up at the meeting unprepared.
Speaker B:And number two, if you've been gifted an hour of someone else's time, you might as well squeeze as much value as possible from that interaction.
Speaker B:So my recommendation would be to understand that this is like dealing with a real person, although it's not real.
Speaker B:And therefore some of the good habits around time management, project management should prevail.
Speaker B:And I would say if you want to work on something with AI minimum, we book a 45 minute slot in your diary to work on that project and you'll be very pleased with the results.
Speaker A:I admit I've been guilty of doing the quick slap dash, quick, ask the question, see what the outcome is.
Speaker A:And I suppose that you've perfectly touched on kind of one pitfall that I imagine a lot of people fall into.
Speaker A:And I'm sure you must have kind of experiences or examples of other pitfalls that are easy for businesses to fall into, that actually long term isn't the right kind of steps or processes they should be taken.
Speaker B:Yeah, and listen, these are my mistakes as well, by the way.
Speaker B:So you know, if I can speak with confidence about why you should not do this because I've done it and regretted.
Speaker B:But I thought this is not to your point, this is not a clever or small long term strategy.
Speaker B:But I think that the first one is exactly that which is trust, actually that you know better than AI, that certainly your understanding of people is far, far superior than AI and therefore what AI can do is take you 80% of the way there, but that 20% use the director Chief editor content is still very light, so you should not allow the newspaper to go to print for the next morning unless you the editor in chief.
Speaker B:I said yes, I'm happy with the content, so on and so forth.
Speaker B:So the number one thing that I wish I'd done sooner was to build the tone of voice and this idea of making sure that even though you are co creating, collaborating with AI, ultimately what your audience want is to get a feel of who you are as people.
Speaker B:And the risk is that you believe that you're not good enough as a copywriter, you believe that you're not good enough as a social media marketer and therefore you start to delegate the entirety of the thinking process, creative process and publishing process to AI as a result of which you don't have your voice.
Speaker B:And listen, we've all been there, we couldn't all spot now the AI produced content, you know, and I'm not sure why everything has to be elevated or enhanced, but there we are.
Speaker B:And I have no idea why there are so many rocket emojis in all over, you know, the Internet, but that seems to be what AI thinks, you know, we do.
Speaker B:So what I wish I'd done sooner was to build a, a portfolio of my content in my style.
Speaker B:So I'm thinking articles, Ben, I'm thinking press releases, I'm thinking even podcasts, I've been a guest on and so on.
Speaker B:So what you want to do is think about this idea of induction of the new member of staff that is going to be in charge of communication.
Speaker B:So what they would do for a number of days is do little work beyond watching, reading, attending meetings and taking on board what makes you you and what makes you so unique.
Speaker B:So practically with AI, what you can do is put together, you know, in a folder, online articles, press releases and so on, where the words that you've written, maybe the words you've spoken are kind of captured, that becomes the knowledge bas, because then when you start to ask AI to work on anything for you, what you can say before you start anything, a lovely assistant, can you please consult this body of work?
Speaker B:Because this will be how I expect you to replicate in the way in which we do what we do.
Speaker B:So building that induction pack, if you will, would be something that I wish I'd done sooner and I've done it since then, but lost a lot of time in the process.
Speaker B:And then the second thing is to be already dependent on one platform.
Speaker B:So the because I had to do the testing, it was almost very natural for me to look at ChatGPT at Copilot owned by Microsoft, at Gemini owned by Google.
Speaker B:Perplexity AI people should really look into this one.
Speaker B:I was looking at Claude, AI Meta AI and a few others because I wanted to kind of understand good, the bad and the ugly of those different platforms.
Speaker B:And I think they all have different strength, they all have different ways of doing things.
Speaker B:But more importantly, you've got to be sure that you know all the dependents so that in a near future when there would be winners and losers, like very much like the search engines, you end up with all your chatgpt stuff either disappearing or quite simply people saying this is far too expensive or for example, I don't like the way they run the business.
Speaker B:So I'm a bit concerned about this brand as an AI partner and I'm really concerned about the lack of consideration for the environment.
Speaker B:You know, it could be all sorts of reasons why you have to move away and migrate from the platform.
Speaker B:So avoiding the over reliance of one platform will be also the other advice I would give.
Speaker A:So I like the the idea, I suppose it's a two way street.
Speaker A:Almost everyone and like I said, I've done this where you expect the output from ChatGPT, let's say as the example, but really to get the best output.
Speaker A:But you've got to put something in in the first place, whether that be the examples of your kind of work and your style, you've got to be willing to put that in first to get the better results on the back end as well.
Speaker A:And I think one thing you touched on there is that balance almost of keeping the personal while still making the most and taking advantage of AI.
Speaker A:And you see that on whether it's in written format, video, social media, you see that kind of varying levels of success.
Speaker A:Putting it nicely, how important do you think it is still to always remember that either as an individual, as a business, you've got your own voice, your own identity and you still need to make sure that you get that across?
Speaker B:Oh, it's essential and it's been really my work from as long as I can remember in terms of, you know, helping somebody actually be confident about the way they communicate, not paying attention to the others.
Speaker B:You know, that's not what we tend to do.
Speaker B:Because ultimately what I need to do for my customers is for them to be someone's favorite and they will become someone's favorite.
Speaker B:Because the way which you've communicated gives me some inclination about how you do what you do.
Speaker B:The way you approach customer service, the mountain of common sense you deploy when looking after customers like me.
Speaker B:And really your communication skills is not sure how smart you are with the tech or how good you are with the lingo.
Speaker B:It's literally show how much you care.
Speaker B:And an AI struggles with that.
Speaker B:It may get better over time, but actually for me, it's always this idea of I want to find a way for you to use the tools of the time to show how much you care, to show your passion.
Speaker B:You can have different ways to look at it, but ultimately when somebody reads the information, when somebody watches the video, when they listen to a podcast, when they download the ebook, and the tactics go on and on, then of course you know, the reaction that you want from your international audience is as follows.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:If this is how helpful they are remotely, I can't wait to speak to those people.
Speaker B:And I think for me, whilst this may seem like a very ambitious and reasonable goal, because sometimes some businesses, there isn't the interaction, but you can still use that as a motivating factor to say, so what we're doing here is using AI to combat the time issue that we've got, but we're using it to help us actually develop further, maybe rediscover our true voice.
Speaker B:Because what you want to avoid is situation where, let's say in two years time, if we were to have a conversation better, where the vast majority of businesses have produced average content using AI, and in the process, the customers are left thinking, well, I can't tell whether this one should be my favorite or the other one, because they all say and express themselves in a very similar fashion, which is almost taking you back to the early days of the Internet.
Speaker B:Some old enough because you can't mention it with 30 years, the introduction, I'm old enough.
Speaker B:Better under.
Speaker B:When we've started with websites, we didn't have a clue, really had to go that website back to that again.
Speaker B:So for fear of getting it wrong, we looked at the competition and what we did then was to realize that they didn't get it wrong either.
Speaker B:They were just as nervous as we were.
Speaker B:So it's looking the same.
Speaker B:You end up with the paragraph looking the same, you end up with blogging looking the same and so on.
Speaker B:And then it took really a good 10 years to extract ourselves from this, I suppose, you know, the hand on the edge of the swimming pool to go, actually I'm going to swim that way and I'm going to go and do it on my own.
Speaker B:And really that's where blogging became more interesting and people were able to communicate in a way that I suppose what I'm going to say, there ought to be parity between what I see online thanks to AI and face to face interaction because ultimately that's what most businesses would expect.
Speaker B:Now, there will be a time, even if you run an e commerce website, where people will bump into the trade event or they join a webinar or a podcast and so on, so they will see and hear you.
Speaker B:And if they kind of go, well, that's strange because that is not at all the impression that I got when I visited the website and social media and so on.
Speaker B:And they kind of make them the link thinking, oh, I wonder if they've been using AI to such a degree where they lost their personality.
Speaker B:And for me the risk is just that, which is just because you want to get things done quicker doesn't mean that they're going to be better.
Speaker B:And as a kind of antidote to that, my recommendation, as you know, and you had a moment to go, was make sure that you spend a good 45 minutes appointment with your admin assistant or your consultant.
Speaker A:It's good and it's interesting to see the point that AI is only going to get bigger, it's only going to get better.
Speaker A:But in a way that's going to have a knock on effect in meaning that personality is going to become even more important because as you put it, more and more people will lose that as they look for the quicker the easier just using AI.
Speaker A:So actually in turn it's going to have that knock on effective.
Speaker A:You've actually got a chance of standing out even more against your competitors by making sure that you always keep that personality at the kind of the forefront of everything that you're doing.
Speaker A:Businesses and people in general.
Speaker A:Now you've already mentioned it kind of through, through the news, but I feel like everyone's just bombarded.
Speaker A:You can't use a search engine now without trying to find an app or a platform or a website.
Speaker A:They'll say it has the latest AI this or latest AI that.
Speaker A:It'll make life quicker, easier, simpler.
Speaker A:It'll make you a millionaire overnight.
Speaker A:Thanks.
Speaker A:Thanks to AI So I know we've been very lucky through the magazine that you've provided lists of apps that can help people and help businesses.
Speaker A:And we'll link that in the bio as well for the podcast.
Speaker A:But just for now, just for everyone listening, what would you say the best steps?
Speaker A:How did you find those apps?
Speaker A:How would you suggest a business goes about kind of sieving through the noise and finding the right AI platforms and apps to actually help their business?
Speaker B:Couple of ways.
Speaker B:And thank you again for the opportunity to contribute to the magazine.
Speaker B:It's great for it keeps me right as well.
Speaker B:It keeps me sharp do that but for me so two things.
Speaker B:This is far too important to try and work it out on your own.
Speaker B:So I would say this should be a collective effort either across the organization or across your business network.
Speaker B:It takes me back and again I have tendency to be very nostalgic about those things, but takes me back to the early computer clubs when people were discovering how to use computers for the first time both at home and in business.
Speaker B:Or you could have tried to get to buy the big book of how to use Microsoft Office, but that was probably not particularly appealing.
Speaker B:Or you got together and as friends and business colleagues you work it out together.
Speaker B:So I think for me would be for our viewers and listeners find a way to either be the east to Gator or join an existing business cohort and together try and understand how to get more value from the actual that's number one.
Speaker B:Number two, be super, super selfish and practical.
Speaker B:So you know, think put the list together what I call your time thieves.
Speaker B:So ignore the headlines, ignore the advice even from people like me frankly and just go through what you did as a business.
Speaker B:So sit down with your colleagues and may take a couple of sessions, you know so how of teas and biscuits or more better if you can or go elsewhere away from the business.
Speaker B:But you want to list and ask people to get very personal saying for you Ben, during a typical week what are the time thieves and what is really really annoying you in terms of how time consuming it is and you want to create personal AI master plans if you will because ultimately that's a you know we are talking about probably won the most ambitious change management project of sort for a business to bring AI in because it's not like in the days of the first computers or getting to Microsoft Office or learning search engine.
Speaker B:This collaboration with something that can mimic human interaction is quite something.
Speaker B:And to get the value you've got to take your time.
Speaker B:So put Together the list of your time thieves and then extrapolate therefore what kind of assistant you're going to need and what would be their tasks and function.
Speaker B:Then practice writing those briefs.
Speaker B:I know that the term prompt is more prevalent in the AI kind of parlance, but I don't like it because I think it suggests something succinct and swift.
Speaker B:I think it's a briefing.
Speaker B:So if we take the example that people can relate to, of you wanted to use AI to put together a press release to go into some international news platforms, it's not dissimilar in terms of the stages and what you're going to do to talk into a real PR professional and all the questions they're going to have for you.
Speaker B:So step one, collective effort.
Speaker B:Step two.
Speaker B:Conversely though, have what you need at an individual level and then this idea of the sooner you can start to reclaim time, the sooner you can spend time on more ambitious use of AI.
Speaker B:And then you can start to be looking at the three functions.
Speaker B:Is it for admin support or is it for expert support?
Speaker B:And how the two columns in your head or on the whiteboard and so on, they start to list all the wishes.
Speaker B:I wish I could spend time with an SEO expert.
Speaker B:I wish I could spend time with the marketing researcher.
Speaker B:I wish I could spend time with a market expert for whatever country.
Speaker B:So all those wishes needs to be expressed and that we imagine, therefore that we've been gifted that one hour free consultancy and that we make it happen and put it in a diary.
Speaker B:And that can work really well.
Speaker B:And that in itself then needs some form of leadership.
Speaker B:So as a business owner, you need to start to coordinate with that effort and create momentum and pace, allow people to test, allow for things should not particularly be impressive to begin with.
Speaker B:And then you can rotate and then as the experimentation phase reaches its network conclusion, then you can start to put in the strategy, as we would call it.
Speaker B:But that could take you three to six months of testing and testing and testing.
Speaker B:Until such time you've settled on a number of things.
Speaker B:But back then, your colleagues are up for it.
Speaker B:The cohort you've joined find new ways of learning.
Speaker B:And then to your point about how do you keep in touch with what's happening?
Speaker B:Well, I mean, no wishing to be flippant about it, but keep track of what Horizon magazine is doing because we have that regular column.
Speaker B:But I think also I would just simply the use AI to give me a monthly roundup of what I should be concerned about in my sector.
Speaker B: ead of trying to subscribe to: Speaker B:Leave that to someone like me.
Speaker B:Ben, frankly, you know, that's, that's my attention to all of this.
Speaker B:What I would do again actually as a practice run, say, okay, well I'm going to use AI as my ultimate business detective.
Speaker B:So I will describe my organization, my activities, what I wish to achieve with AI and then what you want to get really is some super practical and relevant case studies and exemplar from your sector.
Speaker B:Because I think the criticism that I would have of the official platforms like ChatGPT's newsletter or even Microsoft, IBM, I read all of those.
Speaker B:They're very vague, very top level and the language is always very exciting.
Speaker B:But then if it's seriously about what doesn't work, it's always fascinating to me.
Speaker B:So I think what you want to do is almost use AI to be your ultimate business detective and curate what you need to know.
Speaker B:And in terms of what's changing on the platforms, it's not that major.
Speaker B:So frankly, if you keep using the platforms on a regular basis, you'll see for yourself what new features they are introducing, which are usually features that you thought to yourself that are, they've taken far, far too long.
Speaker B:So I don't want people to feel under pressure to keep track what's happening with ChatGPT.
Speaker B:You'll find out for yourself all along.
Speaker B:My desire is for you to actually be a skilled operator of all platforms to begin with.
Speaker B:And one way to do that is to have your imagination stimulated by the group that you belong to, by your needs and hopefully by using AI are your ultimate news roundup creator where you know what's happening in your industry when it comes to AI and it will trigger some thoughts.
Speaker B:Actually I never thought of that in that way.
Speaker B:Therefore, let me give it a go and you build your, your profile accordingly.
Speaker A:What do you interested in?
Speaker A:Kind of what do you say to, to people who are still on the fence about AI or thinking for whatever reason are not for me or not for my business.
Speaker A:I'm all right with what I do, thanks.
Speaker A:How, how do you approach the topic with them and make them see kind of the possibilities with it?
Speaker B:I would begin by saying it's absolutely fine and absolutely normal to feel that way.
Speaker B:Actually, I'm always a little suspicious.
Speaker B:People don't feel like there's something we should be careful about with AI.
Speaker B:They get carried away and go too far the other way.
Speaker B:And we've seen this happening over and over again with digital from the first websites to email marketing, to CRM systems And so on, people will sometime assume in nature as well are over engineered.
Speaker B:So what I would say to people is it's absolutely fine.
Speaker B:And in fact we need people like you as part of our collective kind of reflection.
Speaker B:But think again about this idea of the evolution of doing business over time.
Speaker B:And so perhaps one that I can tell you was I was doing a workshop recently in Yorkshire and one of the ladies in the group was a PR at a PR agency not far from York and she was saying, this AI stuff is going to put me out of business.
Speaker B:I said, I don't think so, because two things is going to happen.
Speaker B:So you think that your customers are going to use AI to do press release writing and therefore they're going to say to you table story, we don't need you anymore and that you're out of work.
Speaker B:So the likelihood is they still need you for the more advanced form of AI.
Speaker B:And therefore what you should do is allow your customers, maybe train them to do a press release that frees you up time as the expert to do that.
Speaker B:A more advanced stuff of profile raising could be you organize guest speaking for them, you write more lengthy articles, perhaps you get to do the free downloads that we've spoken about for such a long time the customer didn't have time to do.
Speaker B:So you can end up collaborating with your clients, but the likelihood is as follows.
Speaker B:They're going to give it a go.
Speaker B:They're going to try and use AI to write a press release, but actually they won't know whether or not they've done a good job.
Speaker B:So they're still going to need you to check what they've done.
Speaker B:But I can guarantee you that within a few months they're going to say we've had a go.
Speaker B:We're not AI experts, actually it's quite boring for us to do, so can you please take it back?
Speaker B:So allow people that journey of discovery.
Speaker B:But for me, my conclusion and for people who are hesitant is saying, I get it.
Speaker B:Because ultimately the real impact of AI is that we've all been promoted overnight without having a say.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So that means that overnight we'll become team leaders of a team of digital assistants.
Speaker B:And that's just challenging.
Speaker B:You know, that's not an easy thing to kind of wrap your head around.
Speaker B:So just take your time.
Speaker B:It's not necessarily that you could ignore, it's not optional like perhaps others have been in the past and just keep asking the right questions because again, collectively we need people like you who are perhaps just a bit more hesitant and they ask all the right questions all of the time and just find your pace, find a way to embrace it.
Speaker B:And the best way to do it is to do one thing, maybe with the eye and see the value, see the evidence and then grow from there.
Speaker A:That's very poor, I think.
Speaker A:So that's kind of twitched on AI generally and ways that any business, no matter kind of where your business is based, where your customers are based, can, can benefit from AI and integrate and use AI.
Speaker A:But just focusing specifically now on businesses who trade internationally, what would you say are some of the additional benefits that they can potentially get out of AI that can really help them when they're looking at new markets?
Speaker B:Let's say the one thing that you can do, which others will not need to do as international traders is actually use AI to play the role of your future international customers.
Speaker B:Because of its access to information, it's access to what's available out there from let's say trends and stats from governments all the way to initiative from private sector to be able to educate and brief.
Speaker B:The assistant to pretend to be a first time visitor to your website, for example, for that particular territory in the world can be athlete enlightening and interestingly you can do that in two ways.
Speaker B:So you can write the brief and explain your role today is to be these type of customers from that sector with that job role, with that particular culture and language affinities.
Speaker B:And what would be the likely reactions will be the likely objections, what would be the likely questions and doubts?
Speaker B:And so we can really kind of break it down into market intelligence, but very human level.
Speaker B:So that to me is exciting because you don't need to do that to the same degree if it's a UK only business or you should, you know, you should have your business Personas and kind of challenge yourself.
Speaker B:But so this idea of playing the role of those, the national visitors to your website, for example, but that also could go all the way to.
Speaker B:I'm about to get ready for a meeting with these customers.
Speaker B:This is my first foray into this territory.
Speaker B:What questions could they have for me?
Speaker B:What questions should I have for them?
Speaker B:You can kind of add it as a coach for the international.
Speaker B:Of course there could be a reflection on the content itself, there could be a reflection on if you understand those cultures and those language preferences, can you challenge the status quo of my website, my LinkedIn profile and so on?
Speaker B:So the element of preparedness is quite extensive.
Speaker B:And actually in Horizon magazine he and I have put together an example of an AI brief to do Some extensive market research people I think will enjoy literally, they can copy and paste it into their preferred platform.
Speaker B:They can see two things really, how detailed and in depth you can get with AI.
Speaker B:But the one exciting thing people could do internationally is then practice their language skills.
Speaker B:So, so you can now use voice.
Speaker B:So Copilot is particularly good at that.
Speaker B:Google AI Studio is very good at that.
Speaker B:You could even go on if you wanted to practice your French, Ben, go on the trial one, but find the local versions and practice writing that language and speaking that language.
Speaker B:That could be kind of an interesting one.
Speaker B:So you prepare for the meeting, you prepare for the trade show and you can use AI to listen, respond to you, but also give you some feedback on words, pronunciation, idioms and that kind of things that can work well.
Speaker B:And then finally for me, which is just absolutely amazing, is feedback on visuals.
Speaker B:So with Google AI Studio, you can actually share your screen.
Speaker B:So you could say, now this is my slide deck, or this is my website.
Speaker B:This is the Facebook advert.
Speaker B:This is what I'm doing.
Speaker B:And bear in mind your understanding of that particular market or that particular nationality or that particular culture, what could be some of the things that could do to improve on that as well.
Speaker B:So the ability of using voice is exciting for me.
Speaker B:The ability of using screen sharing to get some critique, what's there from a particular point of view in terms of different culture and different affinities, is very, very exciting as well.
Speaker A:I could have, after just come back from Italy for a week, I could have done with practicing my Italian with, with AI beforehand.
Speaker A:I think it took me a week.
Speaker A:And by time, by the end of the week, I perfected one sentence, ordering something from a cafe.
Speaker A:But then when she then responded to me in Italian, yeah, that's when I had to stand there and go, I'm sorry, I'm done.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:That's all.
Speaker A:All I know.
Speaker A:So, yeah, maybe, maybe next time I need to.
Speaker A:To take that tip on board myself.
Speaker A:I mean, people Pascal could, could listen and ask you questions all day about, you know, what about in my situation I want to do.
Speaker A:This is my main focus of what I'd really love to do at the moment.
Speaker A:You know what would be best help for me?
Speaker A:What app should I be using?
Speaker A:How should I go about incorporating it?
Speaker A:Luckily for us, and luckily for them, that opportunity is now something that with yourself and with have the fantastic expert Norma Foster, who also brilliant kind of contributor and friend of the magazine and the podcast, you've actually worked together to pull together an AI for exporters Masterclass and series to provide people with exactly that opportunity.
Speaker A:So could you very simply just kind of of tell us all what that opportunity is and how it can be such a help to people, a pleasure.
Speaker B:And in a way, the logic, and we must thank you and your colleagues as well to being supportive of the idea.
Speaker B:The logic is the same as this podcast where you introduced this as being the extension of the magazine.
Speaker B:You know, how do we keep adding value, how do we keep adding clarity?
Speaker B:And with Norma Foster, the reflection was how do we bring again the magazine content that we've been writing now for a while, bring it alive and how do we make our stuff even more useful?
Speaker B:And very naturally we reached a conclusion that perhaps an environment such as an online masterclass for people to not only just listen to the good advice, but also ask questions that would be relevant and pertaining to their business.
Speaker B:So the first concept or the masterclass would be a two hour online session, but we would do a lot normally to kind of combine her Expertise in using LinkedIn to build market intelligence, lead generation and connections and how AI can facilitate that happening better, faster, in a way that keeps track of your tone of voice as well.
Speaker B:And within that there's presentations, there's live demos, it's very, very important.
Speaker B:There's the gifting of resources and the briefing and of course a big chunk of time spent on Q and A so that the participant of the masterclass can ask us questions.
Speaker B:And then, you know, using the power, imagination, as we mentioned again, we say, well, and how do we make sure that we continue to be useful to people beyond the masterclass if they wish to do so?
Speaker B:Then the concept of the mastermind sessions came back.
Speaker B:This is something that we've done in the past, Ben, with content marketing maybe 10 years ago and you know, and so on, whereby we really go into, you know, in depth sessions with those very small groups.
Speaker B:That's difference with the masterclass, where the numbers is not limited as such, but with a mastermind, we want people to be part of a collective, you know, part of a cohort.
Speaker B:For five sessions, they design and complete their AI plus international marketing strategy for their business.
Speaker B:And so really with just for process to carry them all the way to creating those learning experiences that can make a big difference so that we can go from understanding and being a bit more confident about it all the way to being a skilled operator and being very competent in the process.
Speaker A:I've got to say as well, you know, thank you very much for offering the essentially 25% discount for anyone you know, Horizon listeners and readers and I think, think kind of for 75 pound, for two hours to hear from you and Norma talk about LinkedIn exporting AI and to be able to kind of just pick your brains.
Speaker A:I can think of an awful lot of worse ways to spend 75 pound, I'll be honest.
Speaker A:I think that's a brilliant kind of offer and opportunity and one that any business should look to take up.
Speaker A:So, so thank you very much for kind of putting those on and giving us just the opportunity just to be part of it in any way and help you guys kind of get people involved and help people to upskill and just realize their potential.
Speaker A:And the potential and like you said, AI is not going anywhere.
Speaker A:It's only going to get bigger, it's only going to get better.
Speaker A:So people now need to understand it and, and start incorporating in the business and yeah, make the most of it, don't, don't be scared of it.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker A:Just appreciate how to properly utilize it.
Speaker A:And I think that's perfect thing that you've said throughout and you always say, I know if I've spoken to you previously, Pascal, and I'm sure that's, that's what you'll be helping people to really understand and do.
Speaker A:So thank you.
Speaker A:Thank you very much.
Speaker B:My pleasure.
Speaker B:It's been great conversation.
Speaker B:Thank you for your question because a lot of it is, let's say, firsthand experience and it's nice sometimes to capture it and share it in a way that we've done today.
Speaker B:And between that and like you said, the resources you've created, you and I, over time, I think there's a lot there to get someone to either refine their current practices or start from a, from a stronger base.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So what we'll do is you'll find Pascal's contact details in the bio below you'll find his apps cheat sheet, which I think now we're probably running on, I'd say about over 50 at least apps on there.
Speaker A:So for any business in any situation, there's certainly hopefully some app that you're going to find on there that can help you.
Speaker A:We'll also include link to the Eventbrite page where businesses can sign up and even just find out more about the, the masterclass in this series.
Speaker A:And obviously if you have any questions on that, then I'm sure Pascal, myself, Norma, more than happy for you to get in touch and ask anything that you may, that you may have, but otherwise that's all from me.
Speaker A:Thank you very much for everyone for putting up with me.
Speaker A:I think as soon as I first stop on this, I'm gonna go and find myself a fresh tissue.
Speaker A:But thank you very much, Pascal, for your time.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:That was brilliant.
Speaker B:Absolute pleasure.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And thank you very much, everyone, for listening.
Speaker A:Until next time.
Speaker A:Goodbye, and thank you very much.
