#471 The Future Needs Soul: Mona Bavar on Human-Centered AI and Branding

Episode 471

[00:00:00] 

Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CT O Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me, Mona Bavar. Mona, thank you very much for being here with me today. I really appreciate every guest, especially when they are early in the morning for, for them. [00:01:00] So you're dialing from, from the US on the west coast and you know, the way I was.

Uh, telling you before we start like to do it, is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit more about you, your journey and what you're currently up to, and then we can start the discussion from there. It's gonna be interesting, one, because we're gonna talk about, you know, everything related to technology, creativity, ai, and the future.

So the floor is your wanna. 

Mona: Perfect. Thank you Mehmet, first of all for having me and also for your patience with all the confusion that we went back and forth. Um, a little bit about myself. I am, uh, the founder of DLISH, which is a gifting company, uh, operating outside of Europe, mainly Italy. We source products and curate gift boxes for corporations and that I started about.

10 years ago and recently I started an AI agency because I saw how useful it was in my business when it came out. And uh, [00:02:00] it's called Blue apples.ai. And together with a bunch of friends, we help businesses. Implement AI into their systems while maintaining their brand authenticity. So that's something I'm very proud of and very excited about, especially in the day and age that we're living with.

And a little bit more detail. I'm my, I'm originally Iranian. I grew up in the United States, so I'm very happy to be speaking with someone that, um, is in the Middle East and hopefully sharing a bit of our stories to inspire and maybe, uh, engage other listeners. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. And thank you again, one for being here with me today.

So. I'm always curious about the story behind, uh, any entrepreneur starting their company. So tell me more about like, what was the moment you, you said like, okay, I. This is something I need to do. This is something that people will want, and this is [00:03:00] something that I can stick with it for a long time. I'm talking here about like both dele and, uh, blue apple.

So tell me a little bit more about the story behind it and, you know, how you decided to, to, you know, pursue this, um, this, uh, adventure, I would call it. 

Mona: It is an adventure, more of a journey than anything else. Uh, um, delish started and that's the beauty of, uh, when we know our brand story. Delish started as just an idea because I was, before that I had, um, I.

I was living in Italy and I had a consulting company and then an import and export, and we worked a lot with Dubai. So I was back and forth all the time. And then it evolved and it evolved into products because I saw that working with all the producers, the food producers in Italy, and there's so many of them, and working with the designers that the idea of this.

Table was very special. And then later on in my business I [00:04:00] understood why and that why was, as an immigrant from Iran to the United States, there was a lot of obstacles that me and my family had to go through. And as young children, when I was only seven, my parents were able to create this beautiful, safe haven around the table where it would keep us rooted to our culture.

Through food, through stories that my father would tell, and then also allow us the freedom to share our emotions, to share the day, to express ourselves. And so subconsciously going through life, and when I moved to Italy and I went to do my MBA, I realized that I was doing the same thing. So creating this world around the table where I would invite people and share.

It was the food that would bring us together. It would be, it was an international program, so people from all over the world were coming and you get to know someone not because [00:05:00] of their skin color or their race or their gender, or anything political related to them. It's more about the cultural side.

And so that bonding was familiar to me. And subconsciously when I got, again, subconsciously it's all subconscious. When I got to my business becoming this journey of an entrepreneurship, I went gravitated towards this food and design, um, aesthetic, and I put these in a box saying This is a gift. And then when my brand story came out, I understood why I wanted food and.

Because it was my world. It was where, uh, I was brought up. I was able to express, I was able to share, I was able to become the woman that I am today. And so I wanted to put that in a box and gift it, and then it expanded to corporate gifting. And so our, I'm very proud of it. Very, [00:06:00] very proud of it, as most entrepreneurs are proud of their creations because it's a way of sharing a piece of yourself.

And my world just happens to be gifting. So you're gifting also a piece of a story. That always comes back to a person and it resonates because you will understand and in storytelling or in brands that communicate and we have an emotional connection with them, it's always the stories that resonate that we gravitate towards.

And so I think that was the, the why for Delish, which led them to the Y for Blue Apples. 

Mehmet: Absolutely fascinating story. And I, you know, like this is one of the main reasons why I love to do also the podcast is, you know. To get out, you know, these stories like your, so we inspire like fellow entrepreneurs and you know, what a beautiful way you described it, especially like bringing, um, you know, people together and from cultural perspective what [00:07:00] that means for us also as well.

Now being in, in, in a. Place where creativity is mainly everything. Right? So, so you, you're in branding, you're in gifting, and we touched base a little bit about your work with ai. So some people now currently are like into two, I would say campaigns. So, or like, let's say they are. Mainly divided. So some people, yeah, AI all the way, let's use ai.

And some people are like kind of, Hey, you know what, like this AI creativity thing, it's, it's like actually killing creativity because the AI goes and find like. Existing works and just like try to rework it. And, you know, the people, some people they find it like it's not authentic. What's your, yeah.

What's your take on that, Mona? Especially from, from someone who's into the, uh, creativity. 

Mona: The, that's a perfect question, MeMed, because that is [00:08:00] exactly what's happening today. The fact that AI has become so accessible and by, when I speak about ai, I speak about either content, the, the, uh, platforms that we use for content creation, so mm-hmm.

Any LLM from chat, GB bt to Gemini, to deep, to whatever it may be, and then maybe, uh, uh, image generation, but getting to. Be authentic and not generic, I think is the creative side. So I started blue apples with friends once we all saw, um, how it was helping us in our businesses. So remember, we've done the work, our generation, um, I'm speaking about myself and my friends.

I started. The world of entrepreneurship about 15, 20 years ago. So in this place, you still had to do the work. We still had to sit down and research a marketing plan. We had to do a business plan. We had to understand so many little details about our [00:09:00] business that wasn't so easily accessible today, which is wonderful that there's so many entrepreneurs.

But what, what they're missing is the fact that you need to know what, how you're going to connect with your audience. So it's very easy to say, you know what? I'm going to generate, uh, I don't know. I'm gonna put out an energy drink, and with that energy drink, I'm gonna sell it. I'm gonna market it. I'm gonna go on social media, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.

And yes, you'll probably scale, you'll probably get revenues, you'll do whatever it is that you need to do, but the danger is. You are going to stand very generic and there's not going to be any kind of a competitive advantage that you have. And in the world of where there's everything, and I call it the world of everything, you are going to become a.

Just like everybody else. So how do you differentiate yourself is through that emotional connection. Think about yourself and how you connect to the brands. So when you sit down in front of a chat, GBT, [00:10:00] and you say, write me a blog, or write me a script. Then it comes out, oh, I'm so thrilled, or let's weave the tapestry of this and that, and using the vocabulary, the LLM vocabulary that it uses, that I like to say, it's going to hurt you and there's no longer creativity and that's going to take it away from you.

And so you become the, the. Let's say the follower of the ai because you don't know how to manage it. So when I speak about creativity in this world of tech or in this world of, um, entrepreneurship for whatever it is that you're doing, you still have to do the background work. And the background work means sitting down, asking yourself why.

That's exactly what we do with our clients as a human. We sit down and we say, why did you start this energy drink business? Why did you just start this gifting business? Why did you start the coaching consulting? [00:11:00] And so you have to understand all of this. So then when the person, your target audience sits down in front of you and they want, they want to purchase or they want to be a part of your community, you then.

Resonate with them, you then inspire them. You then make them want to be a part of it, and you can't do that, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know how we wanna look at it. AI is not there today, and I don't know that it will necessarily be there anytime soon because there is that element of a soul that we all possess and we all put into the things that we love and we start these journeys of creation.

Whether it's an entrepreneur, whether it's building a family, whatever it may be, with a piece of that, giving it our heart, giving it our soul, giving it our love. And so that is what I identify as creation. So you do have to take a little step back. To learn that. Learn to understand [00:12:00] your why, but then once you know it, that's when the start, it starts to fly exponentially.

Mehmet: Yeah. You know, mon, when you were talking about, you know, this, um, couple of examples came to my mind and people, I think people in general, me included everyone. So we tend to do two things. So we tend usually to, um, you know, be skeptic sometime. And the second thing we forget a lot. So people now talking, you know, this is my point of view and I wanted to be like kind of a conversation with you.

So people now who complains about like, hey, like people goes and uh, just copy paste from chat GPT or any other like, uh, AI tool. Um, it reminds me, you know, how many times we used to see brands right back in the days before even, even the internet. You know, I'm all that enough to see that where. You know, you see like another shop.

It used to happen a lot when I was kid, so, so there is a famous shop that does like, let's say, [00:13:00] perfect. Any like, uh, local meet, right? So someone opens and they just change the logo quietly. They change the name very quietly and they try to imitate them. So because us as humans, I think we want the shortcuts.

We want something fast. So here where people, for example, today they go to Chad, GPT or any other tool, I think they're looking for a shortcut for something that they need to get out. This is where the creativity people, they say, yeah, this is not creative for me. For example, when I use ai, I use it as a, as a buddy, right?

I, I, I just say, Hey, like I have this idea. In my mind I'm thinking about it like, what are, like my options, right? And then I have this back and forth like conversation with chat GPT sometimes. And believe me, like the results are really fascinating. But I think we. We, we are like to be blamed for this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Muna, like, what's your take on this? Because we seek, we seek always shortcuts. And [00:14:00] when it comes to creativity, in my opinion, there are no shortcuts. Like you, you need to go and do your, your, your homework. You need to go and really try to get something that can fascinate the world.

So for someone like yourself being experienced, like you did the entrepreneurship like for, for like so many years, what you tell like. Fellow entrepreneurs about this part, like about not, you know, looking for shortcut using any technology, AI included? 

Mona: Uh, uh, that's a great question and I totally agree with you and.

You can definitely go ahead, use the shortcuts, but if you don't know, it's like getting behind a a car and you're driving and you're saying, you know what? I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna go, uh, faster. I'm going to go weave through the cars. I'm gonna take this route, I'm gonna do this. Wonderful. You can do all of that, but if you don't know how to drive.

You're not going to be able to succeed. You probably die. And so it's the same kind of thing. You [00:15:00] may have an influencer and you say to them, okay, I'm gonna give you my energy drink. Go ahead and do whatever you want with it. Sell it. I wanna sell it. I have a hundred thousand cases. I wanna get rid of them.

Let's sell them. Wonderful. You do that. Maybe you won't sell all of it. Maybe you'll, you will sell all of it and maybe you've done it in a shortcut way or you've done it in the long way. But what a, what comes after? So what we forget today with the new entrepreneurs that are coming out with people that are left and right starting businesses or getting even creative in ways is where's the longevity?

How long is this going to span? What is the. Because remember I say entrepreneurial journey and a journey is not something that happens, and you get there really quickly. There are along the way, you may have a pit spot. Stop. Stop, and you'll go and you do something really fast, which is wonderful, but you want to enjoy the process of [00:16:00] creation, right?

I mean, Coca-Cola didn't become Coca-Cola overnight. It's been what, almost a century, if I'm not wrong. Uh, maybe more than a century. And you look at that and you say, as an entrepreneur, I say, yeah, I, that's the legacy I wanna leave. And I believe that's the difference between true entrepreneurship and let me just start a business and do something and walk away.

One thing that I'm grateful for, I'm a generation X and I'm proud to say I'm 53 years old and I worked hard at becoming 53. And so I was fortunate, and I always say this to my friends and I say it to my niece and nephew who are, are a completely different generation. I have been fortunate enough to see so much and to live so much.

It's been hard. It's been difficult. We had to go to libraries and actually take out the book and do the research, so we learned that. Then computers came along and we had to learn how to use [00:17:00] computers and cell phones and smartphones and social media and internet and so on and so and so we've learned how to learn, and I think that's the beauty of.

It's okay if it takes time. We don't have the attention span today anymore because of social media or the web or whatever it may be. And that's a pity because we forget that the process of discovery is beautiful. The process of creating is beautiful, and that from that you, you reap a lot more rewards than that instant reward that you reap.

So when you sit down in front of chat GBT or you sit down in front of whatever LLM or platform that you're using and you say, oh my God, look how fast I generated this, or, look how fast I automated and look how fast I did this. Fine. And it's great and I do it, of course I do it. But remember, you need to have that, uh, bag of [00:18:00] goodies.

That you cultivated throughout the years and through experience that you bring to the table, because otherwise you are just going to be one of those that the wind will blow away. And if that's what you want, great. Yes, you, you planted it, you got the flower and you're not worried about the next year. And so good for you do it, the shortcut.

But then I'm not that person. And maybe most entrepreneurs are not that person or maybe some are not that person. And I think that's where the different lies. It's between the long game or the short game, 

Mehmet: right? Mona? Let's. You know, have a, you know, look on the positive sides. Right. So have you seen, or anything like, you might give us example where people utilize AI into, you know, in a creative way, let's call it this way, when it comes to storytelling and branding, for example.

Like anything that you can share on that Because, [00:19:00] uh, I still believe, as I was telling you, like yes. Uh, don't copy paste from, from chat GT or any other LM tool, but I'm sure there are like ways and success stories that you might want to share with us today about utilizing it for proper storytelling strategies, proper branding strategies.

Mona: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we, we do that. I, and I don't want anyone to think that. It's LLM is the, or any kind of AI is the, the bad guy, and we should avoid it. We use it and we use it very successfully. And I think the best way that we, anyone can sit down in front of it and say, listen, this is a little bit about myself.

First of all, you might want to, all of us have some kind of, um, so, uh, internet footprint. A web footprint. So chat, GBT or uh, whatever you use knows this. And so from there you can get it to understand you. So we had a [00:20:00] client, um, she's very successful. She came to us, uh, based in the UK clothing brand. And she said, I want to relaunch my brand and I wanna make it exclusive.

I don't wanna be on social media anymore and I don't want it to be e-commerce anymore. And we said, okay, let's approach that strategy. So we use chat GBT for ideation, give us some ideas as to how we can do it, and it was wonderful. We had to tell the story. The brand story so that we can communicate it across all the marketing material that's going to be putting put out there.

So we sat with Chachi BT and say, okay, give us an outline as to how to communicate this, uh, messaging, the different channels that we can use. And then so you take it step by step and you start always with outlines. And so the story that came out from her after she did the interview with us personally.

Chat. GPT was able to help us write through an outline, [00:21:00] not word for word, but because we prefer to use, uh, copywriting. I, my myself, personally, love to write, so I still like to do that. But why not? Why not have it generate the outline for you? Why not give you help, it give you direction. We have another customer, a client that we came in.

She is an e-commerce line for a beauty product. And the beauty product. She needed help with conversion and so, and I, I wanna put this in parentheses. No one should ever make the mistake to think that SEO is dead now because chat, GBT or Gemini or Claude or any of them can generate keywords for you. I made that mistake personally for my business and I lost, and I had to rehire an SEO agency.

So that's in parentheses. So we went through this, uh, and she said, I want the product descriptions to convert. And we went together with our SEO team. We sat down and we said, okay, how do [00:22:00] we do this? We. Took ideas from chat, GBT and Gemini is a really good one for product, um, descriptions that convert. And we asked, okay, what is it that the customer, the ideal customer for this beauty product wants to read?

How, what is it that's gonna resonate with them that's gonna say, you know what, I'm going to spend $150 on a pure bottle of oil because it's what I want to do. So obviously there you have to do a little bit of the research and chat. GBT is great for demographics once you know who your ideal target audience is.

But remember, again, it always goes back to giving some kind of an input. So you can't just sit and say, okay, hi, tell me what I do. Tell me about this. Give it something, say, this is my price point. This is my, the, the raw material that goes into my products. And then you say, let's give me an idea as to how to [00:23:00] lay out this product description.

And then you work with your copywriter or your SEO or even with chat, GBT. To get it out. And that was very successful for them. Another one is strategy. We have, um, a hookah brand, a shisha brand Nala, um, very successful, very global. They needed market research done in order to understand what markets they can penetrate and, uh, grow in.

And we did a full market research together with, um. Both Gemini and chat GBT in order to gather data that isn't so easy to gather, um, back before ai. Mm-hmm. So there's been a lot of, uh, cases and we have a lot of case studies that we share where there is, there are success stories. But again, I always say it's like a recipe.

You need all the ingredients in order to make the perfect chocolate souffle. [00:24:00] And that's where I think, uh, if everyone has it, do it in any way that you think and most importantly, have fun with it. No, 

Mehmet: absolutely. And, uh, you just. You know, touch it on the right place. I would say it's about asking the right questions, right?

So, um, today I was watching this, it, it appeared many times, but I just remembered. So this famous video from Steve Jobs in 1985, and he was having this vision. He was telling like, Hey, you, do you know who was the mentor of Alexander Degrade? And he was talking about Aristotle, right? And he was saying, imagine if you can go and ask and.

Of course I can ask, but imagine that if someone answers in AAL way, and I think the AI today is kind of, of course not only arsal. So the, the, the, the LLM are so powerful because I think all the knowledge of humanity, which is sitting somewhere, right? It's, it's been like trained on this data for years.

They've been working on it for years. So now it's. Our [00:25:00] fingertips. And then, you know, I related this to what you said now because about the context about giving the right context. So even if today I have by my side, you know, the greatest mind of the world, even if Steve Job arrive and he's sitting, now, you know, next to me on this chair, if I don't ask the right questions.

Say, Hey dude, what you're doing here? Like, what do you want from me? Right? So I need to ask the right questions, and I think all starts writing the, uh, by asking the right questions, AI included, because AI is actually, uh, you know, all the data of humanity almost. I'm not sure how far they have, you know, uh, ingested there, but of, of course, it seems they in, in invested heavily.

In, in training the models and having a lot of data there. And to your point, Mona, I think, you know, this is where the creativity comes up. If we, we have to be creative in asking questions, and I think people forget something very important. Like every, every inventor, every entrepreneur, they started [00:26:00] by questioning, they ask why it's done this way, why we have to do it this way.

And then you go and you know, like you start to. Try to find out solutions, try to be creative. And I think LLMs are just, as you said, tools for us when, to your point, like for me it's like a magic because um, yeah, I wish I had it when I was in school 'cause I'm sure I would do like much more cooler things with it.

But, but anyway, never too late. Never too late. But now in this age of AI ura and we know all what we think we, we, we live in. In a world full of noise, speed and um, and everyone trying to leverage at the same time the technology that we have, whether it's AI or something else. So how do we still be able to build what we used to call them brand moments?

Like is it like. I don't know. You, you're the expert, like how we can do this and [00:27:00] should we leverage also the personal branding here and how we establish this connectivity, um, with the audience that we want to target. 

Mona: Um, in my experience, vulnerability and honesty, the brands that we resonate, think about it for yourself.

The brands that you resonate and go towards and you, you become a part of their community are the ones that are authentic. And by authenticity, I mean. Part of themselves, they share part of their vulnerability, their story, their, for me, it was very difficult to share my story about being bullied as immigrants or the, the trauma that we went through or the hardships me and my family went through as immigrants in the 19, early 1980s, late seventies when we, when we came to the United States.

And I didn't wanna share that. I didn't wanna put that out there. So it is a part of personal branding because it's my story as the founder of [00:28:00] company, um, that needs to be communicated because then the person who wants to be a part of this community, our client, our customer says, oh, wow, let me go more towards it.

I wanna know more about this person, whether for the good or the bad. The product selling to me has always been a secondary. The more you share. And that's why I think social platforms are wonderful if they're used in the right way, in the sense that you, uh, authentically come out and say, you know what?

This is why I am doing this. This is what this is all about. And we always tend to trust brands that do that, trust people that do that, that don't, are not afraid to, um. Share and be vulnerable. And yes, there's shame associated to it. There's maybe, um, this kind of anx anxiousness that [00:29:00] comes with it, but I think the success will come with that.

I do believe it. I've seen it for myself firsthand. There was so much resistance in sharing my story. There was so much resistance in putting myself out there. I said, oh no, the branch should be from behind the scenes. But you mentioned Steve Jobs, I mean. The first thing when we see that Apple logo is Steve Jobs and you see the man even today after years of his death.

So I think it's some one of those things where the founder should be out there. You should share your story. You should know it, you should communicate it honestly from the heart and um, and not be, uh, resistant to it from my experience and. That I think is, is the ticket and however you need to do that in today's world, the brands that I think, um, have the most success in the clients that we work with, with in blue apples using the AI are the [00:30:00] ones that can come out there and say, you know what?

This is my voice. This is my story. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of my journey and my accomplishments. Let me inspire others by it. I, I just wanna say something really quick. I teach at universities. I, I used to teach full-time. Now I'm guest speaker or guest professor. And the most beautiful thing for me was the lessons I would learn from my students.

And I think that is exactly the same thing when it comes to our customers, our clients, and that's why we love feedback, is the lessons that they teach us. Every time you share, like I'm sitting here with you sharing MeMed, I'm learning also from you. I'm hoping that I'm inspiring you, your audience as you inspire me or people from the outside.

So this is an energy flow. This is back and forth. This is what communication [00:31:00] is. It's that, let me share and let, let you share all of this. And we both get inspired. We both get creative, we both grow. So this tree of life becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and we're part of it. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. Um, and you mentioned actually even, you know, with, with, with, uh, what you did with, uh, DLE actually.

So you focused on authenticity. You focused on bringing the story, you know, from, you know, your early days and you know about, you know, being on the table. And this is. Actually reflects into customer centricity, right? So, uh, putting the customer in the front, um, yeah, I use Steve Jobs as example a lot. I know like the man wasn't perfect, but for me, he, he, he's, he's a role model in entrepreneurship, in startups.

Coming from tech background myself. Um, so I give him as an example a lot because, you know, there's a lot of things that still apply still today. And he always was also fan of this customer [00:32:00] centricity, the storytelling and, you know, the way that he used to, you know. Uh, I would say focus on the problem and why this problem should be solved.

And then after that he do the wow moment of introducing a new product, whether it was the iPhone, even before, like people forget about even the older products. But anyway, to your point, the second thing. Um, about, uh, ins inspiring people. And this is exactly, you know, people ask me like, what do you get out of this podcast?

I said, yeah, I mean, okay, if you're asking me for money wise, I don't think about it. Uh, for me, you know, I wanted to do any impact somehow, and I found like podcasting is my thing because, you know, I really enjoy it. Plus I tell them my biggest. Win from the podcast as a host is I get free lecturing from best people at least for one hour or so.

Um, and imagine like every time I speak with someone [00:33:00] like you, Mona, like you have all this experience. So imagine how much I learn from you to your point, and then. I put that outside on all podcasting platforms. So I say, okay, if one person only listen to this and they get inspired, I feel myself, I fulfilled my mission, right?

Of course, I wish to get impact on more people, but a hundred percent, and this is why, you know, for me it became not only as a media presence, it became for me kind of a. School where I, I'm learning with students, let's put it this way. And again, like every time I have someone like you, una, like I feel like yeah, I should continue to do this because, you know, there are awesome people, uh, all over the place in all, um, you know, countries that we need to bring and let them inspire other people.

But of course, you know, the, we gonna continue a little bit with you here. Um, uh, Mona, so. Are you, I, I've seen something while preparing. I was looking [00:34:00] for the profile and you mentioned something which attracted me. You said the future doesn't need another algorithm, it needs soul. And you mentioned a little bit up in the beginning about soul when it comes to chat.

GPT, what does it mean? 

Mona: Uh, wonderful. Um, exactly that when it comes to. So much in the world today, we have so much, um, a little bit overwhelming much of stuff, whether it's information that's being fed to us or uh, products that we're consuming from any, anything. Take it, any genre. Restaurants are popping up left and right.

Um, replications of products that are there are there, and you this. Um, stress of choice, everything that is sometimes overwhelming. Um, not sometimes, most of the time overwhelming, and you don't know what to do with it. [00:35:00] I think it's, it's nice to center and I'm, and I'm not, woo, I'm not at all that person that says, you know, go and meditate and go and do this, and go.

And I'm not saying that, I'm talking purely from a consumer, uh. Business aspect where you say even there. It's true that there are businesses that pop up and we say they're heartless and they don't care. And maybe that does happen because you're scaling or because of whatever reason, but there are businesses out there that do, there are companies out there that have the soul.

And by that soul, I mean that reason why you started it. So if you maintain that. And it ends up happening a lot where you sell a part, your business, the bigger companies come in and then they want to redo something about it and they often that soul is gone. So we say, oh, new management came and the food doesn't taste the same.

I. You know what I [00:36:00] used to buy from this company? The material used to be so much better, and now it's not because why? They want to obviously scale and the margins to go higher and all that. So that's the part I'm talking about where you can do all of that stuff. But don't forget your why. Don't forget why you started it.

Be transparent, communicate, share it. The algorithm is great. It's there and we're always chasing it. Don't worry about chasing it, just focus on. Why let your, um, heart, and I say this honestly, because I was, I was, and maybe from time to time, I am that person where that fear comes in and you're like, oh no, I'm falling behind.

Look at what happened when OpenAI put out chat, GBT. How scared was Google? Google this big giant is like, oh no, I'm falling behind. You have to answer to stakeholders, you have to answer to shareholders, you have to answer to so many people. You start to now [00:37:00] work on fear. So you say, let me move forward as quickly as possible.

And along the way they made mistakes. And then you say you look at. Open ai and you say, okay, you know what? Sam Altman started with heart. Let's say he started with that purity of authenticity of why I'm doing this. And he was focused like a horse that has its shields on. And you go and you see, this is my objective.

As soon as you remove this, there's this confusion and you're scared and you know which direction to go. And that's what I'm talking about when I say soul. And that's when I say that algorithm, we're always gonna be chasing it. You don't want to be always chasing it, let you focus on you and your mission and your objective and your why, and the algorithm will come.

We have a great saying that the more you chase the world, the more the world will resist. You think of a relationship, the more the man chases the woman. The woman is like, no, no, no. [00:38:00] And we always wanna go towards that more, right? So why not reverse it and say, you know what, you chase me. Algorithm. I. So, 

Mehmet: um, this is not the saying I go by, I tell people, you know, and, and I know by the way, sometime, even if you share something like this on some social media platforms, you get kind of shadow banned if you say this.

But, hey, listen, I don't care. I tell, I tell some of of the people in my circle because I say, look, it's my. Uh, it, it, it's first, it's my ideas second, it's like my style Third, it's, it's me. The human social media and systems and tech are machines. And I come from a technology background, by the way, like I'm very excited about anything tech, but I tell people.

Actually, you know, we invented computer programming. Actually, the first thing I remember still till now when I took the first course ever about computer science [00:39:00] is that it's called instruction set. So you give the computer the instruction to tell it what it does. It doesn't have to be the other way around.

So never ever I tell people, a machine will tell me how should I write? Should I post myself holding a cup of coffee or, you know, so I have like better impressions on, on LinkedIn, for example. I tell them this is completely for me, nonsense because. I'm sometime more aggressive, but I won't like say it here.

I said like, I'm not going to follow what the algorithms want. Like simple, okay. If it's something good, I would do it, of course, but I would not put myself in silly situations, you know, staring on something, drinking coffee, just to get these likes and say, Hey, guess what? The likes are just also gamifications because you are getting the likes today.

Okay, let's talk after 10 years. So this is the question I I ask people nowadays, okay, you're doing all [00:40:00] this. Imagine yourself after 10 years, where are you going to be? This simple question, right? And then, uh, no one knows only the people. To your point, Mona, who have the, they know their wis. Let's put it this way.

This way. They know why they are starting business. They know why they are writing. They know why they want to do what they are doing. Only these people, yes. They have exactly described it the right way. They have this whole sheet, you know, and they are very focused on what they're doing and Absolutely, you know, it's something a hundred percent true.

And thank you for sharing this as we are close to an una. Um, you know, maybe if you want to give advice to, to leaders or maybe fellow entrepreneurs who want to build this, you know, uh, borderless brands and, you know. Any, anything that you think it's, it would be beneficial for them. And of course I want to ask you also as well to let us know where people can get in touch and know [00:41:00] more about your work.

Mona: Um, first of all, advice, uh, I always say the best advice is what you're living. Um, but if I had to say anything from my own experience is. Be flexible because for so many years of my life in this, when I got into the professional world, I come from finance. So I think that's my rigid square. Think, think like with the right side of the brain.

So I. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to explore, even if it means sitting down in front of chat, GBT. It's a great tool for bringing out creativity and it helped me a lot. Don't be afraid to sit down and have fun with it. Just ask the silliest questions that you want. Have just fun and you'd be surprised what it can feed out and give you and how comfortable you start to get with yourself.

So maybe, uh, that would be my. Best advice that I could give because I didn't do it for so many years. I didn't. I [00:42:00] thought it had to be exactly as the book said, it had to be exactly fitting into this box, and true business is about breaking the boundaries and just going as. Far off as you can. And, um, especially now, I have to say, because we're so exposed to competitors.

So if you're on social media, you see your competitors, what are they doing? You're like, oh, no, should I be doing that? Should I not be doing that? And it's like, you know what? Just have fun. If you wanna get silly, get silly. Um, and uh, as far as where people can find me, uh, LinkedIn for my personal, uh.

Contact and then Dli, D-L-I-S-H, us and blue apples.ai for our AI consulting. 

Mehmet: Great. And again, thank you very much Mona, for you know, this, uh, engaging discussion today. Uh, I love when I can I. Mix with guests like yourself, you know, [00:43:00] things which are too much tech, but too much was, which are too much human also as well, which, uh, I think you did it in a very fantastic way.

So really, I, I thank you very much and again, thank you for making it, uh, early in the morning for your Thanks. I appreciate. I appreciate this, and of course for the audience, you don't need to go and find out. I gonna put all the links in the show notes if you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform or if you're watching, of course, as you can find it also in the description.

And this is the final thing, I do it for the audience. This is for you audience, if you just discover this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did so please give me a favor and subscribe. Shared with your friends and colleagues. We're trying to make more impact on people.

And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you very, very, very much this year. You were fantastic. Uh, all your command or your, you know, uh, messages reached out. Not only this because of you, because of your support. The podcast this year, after two [00:44:00] years of doing this, managed to make it multiple times, at least in month of March, April, and getting in the top 200 charts in the Apple Podcast across multiple countries, which is something, you know, I didn't see before you, you used to trend one month in one country, the other months in other country.

But this year, every month we are like attending at least in four to five countries. So thank you very much. I'm waiting more people also. To read from other countries also as well. And as I say, always, um, stay tuned for a new episode very soon, and thank you for your support as always. Thank you. Bye-bye.