307-AI Is Not the Enemy of Your Voice. It Is the Amplifier.

You are not behind. 

You are just not yet visible. 

In this episode Theresa Croft sits down with Eugene Oppong, AI strategist and author, to talk about how faith driven executives and leaders can use artificial intelligence to build a voice platform that actually matches their level of expertise and calling. 

Eugene shares his powerful story of loss, reframing, and awakening and then gets practical about how to use tools like Claude and ChatGPT without losing your identity in the process. If you have been sitting on your message because you do not know where to start with AI this conversation is your starting point.

Learn more about Eugene Oppong and is AI local hub by clicking here!

Read his book "Reframe" on Amazon by clicking here.

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Transcript

Theresa 0:00

The main thing is what you put in is what you get out. So if you put in garbage, you will get out garbage. What I found is the most simplest yet so, so powerful is stepping back and understanding what exactly you want it to do for you. Hey, I'm Theresa Croft Welcome to the Stuck No More Voices podcast. This is the place for faith-driven executives and leaders who are ready to stop keeping their best thinking locked inside boardrooms and private conversations, and start building a voice platform that creates real influence and real opportunity. I'm founder of The Stuck No More Voices Executive Cohort. And the creator of the E.V.O.I.C.E. Method a framework that helps establish leaders turn their story, their experiences, and their calling into a strategic voice. Platform the world can hear. So my guest is Eugene Oppong also known as Eugenius on the online community he has built and served and everything he carries. Eugene has an amazing story. He was born in Ghana where at the age of six he lost his mother and later his sister. These losses did not change his childhood. They would redefine the trajectory of his entire life. That separation from his mother, from safety, from the life he was supposed to have that became the engine behind everything he has built since he immigrated in to Canada in 2001. Welcome to The Stuck No More Voices podcast. Thank you. Thank you. I'm honored to be here and, I'm glad to, to share my experience so other people can hopefully find. Some insights through this podcast, especially for your community too. Thank you. I have to start here, Eugene, because our community is made up of women who have walked through their own hard seasons, and I want them to understand that your stories not just inspiring, it's like instructional. So can you take us back to the moment where you made the decision to reframe instead of staying stuck? The thing?'cause I think this is the moment. For you that might have changed everything. Oh yeah. So yeah, it was, you know, after moving over to, I guess migrating to Canada, I had to live through a lot and, you know, without going into all of the fine, granular details, about two years ago, when. Basically, ended up losing my sister. Oh. And, from that kind of came a lot of things that I guess I wasn't expecting. Mm-hmm. So, long story short, I was faced with two choices. I lost my sister. got into an accident and I wasn't physically able to provide for myself and or my kids. So it kind of put me in a, a ready, a very dark place. Yeah. So, you know, I started to question myself and questioning God asking, you know. Why, why me? And, through the process, I had a moment of an awakening, I call it, where, you know, I, as I explained it, it, it felt like my entire life just kind of flashed in front of me, almost like in a time loop. Yeah. And it just kind of started to make sense. All of the things became almost synchronicities as they would explain. Where it felt like everything was starting to make sense. And so the two choices was do I to choose the path of fear or do I choose the path of faith and allow God to, so to speak, move through me in this situation? So in that. You know, those synchronicities started to make sense and helped me realize, to reframe everything that I have been through that it wasn't for my demise, but in in Italy it was more of. You know, we, we pray and we ask God, can you You know, give me wisdom. Can you give me patience? And I always say, we beware of what we ask for. Right? So, I did get everything that I asked for. What I had to do was reframe my mind to be able to pick out the opportunities that actually were in those turmoils. Okay. And so from that came reframe. And, yeah, I am very glad that, you know, I, I did go through the experience and I wouldn't change it for anything because I wouldn't be where I'm at without it and without God. We were both in the same marketing venture and we learned a lot from that as it eventually crumbled, should I say. And so from there, I think, is that about the time when you dove deep into AI and started to kinda reframe even your business approach? Was that about the time? Yeah. so at the time I would say. I was trying to understand the separating factors between the really successful, content creators versus myself and what is the gap? So through that, trying to understand how the algorithms work and then when, AI became available for using, It made everything so much more clear because I was able to articulate myself in the knowledge that I had gained, and it actually allowed me to dig deeper into utilizing the AI's ability to dissect things. In a way that I understood. So that was the, starting moment that, birthed the interest into digging deeper into ai. Yeah. And did you see a, when you dug the first digging into ai, did you see a little different in conversion in the videos that you were doing or the content, was it converting a little better with the beginning journey of ai? Yeah, so what I noticed was, now I was able to see from an analytical perspective the gaps that I was missing, right? So, you know, some of the things that we were, you know. I was teaching back then was basically helping to understand the pattern, interrupt your hooks and how they're so much important because yeah, as we all know, people have attention span of, you know, very little. And so we needed to be able to capture people's attention with a hook. As well as a sub hook in order to keep that attention with a promise of something that they're going to get back at the end of the video. So just that little strategy made the big difference in content creation and then basically utilizing AI helped me discover why it's important. To include some of these things. So that was what kind of birthed the journey of, you know, coaching once I understood it. And yeah, it did give a significant difference in analytics, in terms of engagement, in terms of, you know, watch times, which were all very important. You know, if you looking to use your content to convert. Right, right. As part of the executive cohort that, the program that I have, I call it platforms, so it's not just a podcasting coach. And I think one of the most important platforms is to really understand ai. It's a tool. It can enhance. Things it can, like you said, give you insight and you were the one who encouraged me in many ways. I have to tell you, it wasn't just ai, but in the latter part here, we had a conversation and you really encouraged me to check out. Claude, I had spent three years on chat, CPT. Mm-hmm. I was a little nervous about losing it, but I did just a little homework, transferred that over to Claude, and as a writer and as a speaker, as a podcaster, this is why I wanna make it a platform inside the program. So I guess I would say is. What would be one piece of advice for these Christian leaders who wanna build an AI powered voice platform? It's like they may not know where to begin, so I'm gonna ask you to pull back your geniusness and speak like you were speaking to a fifth grader. I love that prompt. I'm like, Hey, listen, you're not a fifth grader anyway. What would be a simple way? Okay, let, let me just say it. Let, what would be a simple way to begin?'cause most of these ladies are in ChatGPT already. Some of them may be a little more savvy than the others, but I'd love to see a framework of you just explaining it from ChatGPT and like you said to me on that phone call, why would Claude be an addition to go along with it or. For me, I'm kinda like totally going over to Claude. What would you say? so all of these, LLMs, I call them, they all have their strengths. Okay. So, from that perspective, I always say, don't be attached emotionally to just one. Learn the strengths of each one and. When necessary, so to speak, utilize them in a way that would benefit you. And in the era of engineering or computer science, it's like you, you want to have more variables so you have more opportunities. Right. So simply put, I would say if anyone was starting from the beginning, whether you're a seasoned ChatGPT user or not, one of the things that I personally found with Claude is, The main thing is what you put in is what you get out. So if you put in garbage, you will get out garbage. What I found is the most simplest yet so, so powerful is stepping back and understanding what exactly you want it to do for you. What is the mission that you're trying to accomplish? And through that mission, you need to have a conversation with Claude. And I always say keep that thread going as long as you want it to, because the more you share, the more he understands the fabric of what you're trying to accomplish. So with that, what I would say for seasoned ChatGPT users that either want to transition or leverage Claude as well. I always advise to basically ask ChatGPT to give you a summary or a full detailed summary of every discussion pertaining to the project you're working on. And then transfer it over to Claude in the MD file or PDF of some kind. And, between the conversations that you have with Claude, as well as the PDF that you're able to gather. Those two would basically give Claude enough of an insight to understand your business, you know, vision or your, your passion, and be able to help you to kind of combine them all together in a way that is meaningful, that would also create impact, right? Yeah. I had, you know, three years of. ChatGPT. I did find a video about, I think even Claude helps you at Claude dot, you know, change from chat, GT type web link. And I did finally figure out how to export. Going into the settings on ChatGPT and export the data. that made all the difference and mm-hmm. So I am a big Claude user, but I won't deny the help that ChatGPT had given me. I had gone all the way up to a business executive level and noticed a difference. But just if you are a ChatGPT and you think, why would I wanna go to Claude? For me, can I just say for me personally and just using it for the last little bit, I, I just feel like I can talk to it, you know, and it really gets me, and I feel free.'cause like in ChatGPT felt like I was saying too much in my prompts, but, and I'll still use ChatGPT, but there was, because I have powerful GPTs that I've had for three years. But there's something about, I think I, I just want you to help me help them understand that. This is real. It is just a tool, but it is a real tool that I believe as Kingdom women capture it and use it. It's only gonna make them more visible. It's only gonna be another platform to, and not something that takes all day. This is, think about this. This is what we're trying to help, where it doesn't take all day, but it elevates you. Your business with this platform that then if you think about it, Eugene, that platform streams down to everything else. It streams down to public speaking, speaking on stage. It streams down to writing that book and it streams down to podcasting. All the things I love to have in my program. So, anything else to really encourage you? Because you did a good job. But anything else that would be like, something that they wouldn't think of, of why they should not be emotionally attached? And what were the top three? I know ChatGPT, and Claude, I mean, I don't even know if we wanna bring a third one in, but what are your top three? it is a little bit hard because, I have been personally experimenting with, what I call different stacks, so, okay. so for instance, I'll give us as an example for my personal content creation. I have a combination of Claude as well as, I do use grok and Clot allows you to do this, right, okay. where you can do that combination, because I love the way, Grok's imaging, okay. Comes out. Wow. And so though ChatGPT is also very strong at it, I almost find between Claude and GrokChatGPT. I've had the most conversation with Claude and Grok Oh, wow. And I keep finding that the more and more I have conversations with them, the more and more my insights are being spit back to me in the practical way that seems achievable. That's so good. Right? Yeah. I love the part where, you know, and I, I equate it to, you know, for, for believers that, you know, the Bible talks about renewing your mind. This is a very great example of that because we're used to doing things specific way in the past, and so with this new era, you don't wanna impose your objectives onto the. AI because it got, it's got all the knowledge that it needs to help you,

15:15

right?

Theresa 15:16

Right. What you need to do is state your intentions, what you want to see come out of what you're trying to do, okay? And allow it to ask you clarifying questions to help you achieve that goal, because execution is cheap. Now you can experiment. You can prototype, you could do whatever you wanna do, and it doesn't have to take a whole dev team. To do what you and Claude or you and chat GPT or you and gr can actually accomplish. And the renewing of mind, just to get back to that, goes to also when you understand who you are. It's not very easy to be swayed. Right. But identity. Identity, yes. And so that identity plays a really, really, really big factor because. You know, we have mentors so we can, so to speak, not, not copy them, right. But basically the pitfalls that they have, we can basically learn from and adapt it to who we are. Mm-hmm. It gives you that unique perspective where when you're sharing, you're not sounding like everybody else. You are sharing from who you are. And so your perspective, your, your ingenuity, we all have it'cause wow, we know. As below. So believe, we are created in his image. And so that therefore we have creation in us. So we need to tap into our imagination and basically align our vision. So Claude or ChatGPT, or you know, whichever LLM that you use will help you push your objective forward, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the last part I want to add to that is. So long as anything that you're doing is truth seeking, and this is the, the big separation that I feel like we need to bring or hone down on, okay. To, to basically help us have better impact out there. These ais are super smart, but you could think of a genius kid at six years old who's still learning. Right. And so with that, you want to make sure that whatever you're doing, it's in truth seeking you, you're operating out of truth because deception creates chaos. And so you don't want to just, you know, you have an idea and then you just want to go with it. How does it impact you? How does it impact, you know, the people that are going to be receiving whatever you're trying to create? Yeah. If it's truth seeking and it's helping people. You better believe that it would align with you in a way that actually make a big, big impact.'cause somewhere I, I put in my personal thing I said. No, basically no bs, only the truth. And I noticed some of my responses are like, well, Theresa, I have to be truthful. This, I don't, you know, if I'm asking him a question and he's, if he can't find it, he'll say, well, I have to be honest with you. And another thing about identity that, this is really interesting. I'm using, I'm started having a project where it's just my prayers. And my talking to God and God talking to me. What do I mean by that? Well, someone challenged me about a year ago to pray in the Holy Spirit, pray in the Spirit, and then let then type out what God is saying. Well, that came very easy because in my most difficult, hard times, I was riding Listen To The Vinedresser It wasn't something I could conjure up, but the father was talking to me. As the Vinedresser in John 15, and I would just write, Listen To The Vinedresser..., and I'd write a whole bunch of stuff. But anyway, and it was powerful. I'm gonna use Claude to rewrite the book, but this is what I notice. I actually, when I put my prayers in there. And it's res if it, it responds and if anything I read the response and it solidifies my identity. It lines up with I know who God made me to do. I know what God's assigned in my destiny, and I know what he wants me to do in daily life. And so that's just a challenge to those of you who wanna just make it a project and just say, my prayers and I, I've been doing that for the last few days and I've been just really, if anything, it's encouraging. It's almost like it's your voice. You're putting your voice what the Holy Spirit said to you. But then Claude has this amazing way of adding Bible verses to each point, well, this is why that, and then it'll just, it'll almost be like. Eugene, it'll be almost like someone is having a talk with me from a spiritual perspective because I've lined up all these prayers from identity perspective of who I am in God and whose I am in God. So that's just a kernel of identity part.'cause we talk a lot about identity. Eugene. So I appreciate that. Now listen, listen, you are an author of an amazing book and I really like it because you are bringing together neuroscience scripture and NLP. How does the way we think about ourselves, you kind of touched on this and our calling directly, impact how effectively we can build and leverage these AI systems. So how does neuroscience. scripture and how can we use that to really, like, I kind of gave an example of impact us, but leverage AI systems in our business leverage. And it may be an only an identity thing, but I'd love to hear what you say. Yeah. The, the book came out of experience, my personal experience and, the best way I can describe it is, you know, kind of growing up suffering those, in my opinion at that time. That's what it felt like. Suffering. Yeah, yeah. when you become a father, there are things that. Basically you can't fake alignment. Yeah. Because you know, the kids can read through some of those things, right? Yeah. And the part that made a big difference was that upon awakening, as I call it, it felt like wow. Like where has 15 years of my life been? Like I, I had been there. Yeah, I had been part of it, but for some reason I was just. I just felt like I was just passing through the motion of life. Yeah, without any purpose, and I believe this is where sometimes societal influence or expectations or duties. Weighs on you, where you feel separated from who you are because you know, I'm a man on a mission. I have to feed my kids, I have to do this, I have to do that. And in the busyness sometimes we never take the time to identify who we are. So in more ways than one, people feel displaced when they become an empty nester, so to speak, because they, they no longer have that identity of. Oh, I'm a mom. Or you know, in some cases people have a lot of qualifications that basically they allow just that to define who they are. So in my journey, what I realized was that whether I was a dad, whether I was a landscaper, whatever, you know, Whatever title I had, adopted through that life, experience, it never really honed in on who I was. Mm. But rather, I, I expressed who I was. In the form of the quality of work that I did. But then again, that still does not define or de like define who I am. Right? So it was that awakening moment where I realized that, you know, everything that I'm actually looking for is not out there. It's actually within. And you know, Christ gave us the best example, and I go back to again, renewing your mind. Why? Because we have grown up in social expectations and envi environments, trauma that basically we play over and over in our brains. So. Today, it's a new day. God has given you a new start. You woke up, you're healthy. This is the day that you pick what you want to accomplish today and basically live it to the fullest. And so when you bring all of those things from back there into today, you have already doomed yourself before you got out of bed. Wow. So. Experiencing what I had experienced and waking up one day and realizing, okay, I'm a child of God. I'm made in the image of God. I need to renew my mind on a daily basis because there's more to who God is through Christ than there is of the expectations that are put on me. And so that separation or that clear, moment gave me the insight that, you know. All these experiences that I have been through, they did not condemn me. Yeah. They were rather something that inwardly had defined who I was almost like your, your credentials. Yeah. That would allow you to actually move forward to impact. Long story short. I came to this realization and I'm glad that we live in the time that we're living now. cause this literally with the help of AI helped me articulate what's all in here. I love it. And, I love that. Put it down in the book. I appreciate you say that all that's in here.'cause one of my things is I see women who are very smart executive level and, and it's all in here, but they, someone out there needs what's in here. It's all in their boardroom. It's all in there. That's just beautiful. So now I wanna honor you and, let people know, what your online consulting consists of. Maybe someone wants to hire you or have you look at their project. Can you first tell us just a little bit about your business and then maybe how someone can get in touch with you? yeah, absolutely. so. What, what currently I'm working on, and what the business is, is basically helping small mom pop shops, local businesses, Basically automate repetitive processes that take time, but not really. they're not actions that grow the business, but they're necessary to keep the business, going. And the biggest part, which is the biggest insight that I found because I was also a small business owner Is that when you're one person, you know, you gotta do your accounting, bookkeeping, customer service. With the level of where AI has gotten to, we have the ability to automate a lot of things. If it involves a screen, we can automate it. It was a desire of mine to solve my own problem. And in so doing, I realized that, you know, this could be a huge, huge thing for, you know, small businesses and, you know, local mom and pop shops. But the biggest part that makes the biggest impact is some of The abilities or insights that AI is able to give us, it doesn't matter what the type of business is. What I say is if you have a business and you do not have an online presence, you want to be AI ready. And what I mean by that is, one, you have to be able to track, you know, your activities that are coming in based on, you know, social media. how are people interacting with your social media? What are the insights that you can gather from there? your Google reviews. Mm-hmm. your website visits, what are the insights you can gather from there? These are tools that big enterprises. In indirectly have been manipulating to basically grow their business because yeah, all of these insights help you make a better business decisions for your business. So where this makes sense is now with ai, we are able to bring enterprise level, let's say insights that you would've never had before for mm-hmm. Huge bucks if you were going to go that route. But due to ai, you know, we're able to bring that kind of level of insights to small local business to help them grow. And the part that I love most about it all is that. You know, some of these local businesses have made the biggest impact in their communities. Yeah. But nobody knows about it. It's only in their little community. So that was what basically drove me to birth, you know, local AI hub, which is, an AI fully run local directory. Okay. So it's supposed to match people, you know, consumers with, businesses and I mean. Google does all of this too, but this one is more refined to the local level. so that way, you know, these local businesses that are doing great work in their community that nobody has heard of on mainstream, but are making the biggest impact, they need to be recognized as well. And so this was some of the passion that kind of. Birth local AI hub and yeah, it's gonna be a, a national favorite. I kinda want these women to realize this. No, you may be known in your little culture or your little business here, but, but what you have needs to go further. I mean, it's, it's about business. This isn't a hobby. So Wow. And your expertise and all of that is truly inspiring. So, Eugene, thank you for taking your valuable time with us. I mean, You spoke exactly to what I wanted to help, but I didn't necessarily have the expertise. And I just look forward to seeing you grow and, and I look forward to our relationship continuing'cause you are truly one of the gems in the marketplace and the kingdom, you know, area you carry so much. And so I, I just pray that God continues to do exceedingly more than you can imagine. I pray. Blessings on your four children. And just say thank you for being who you are. Thank you, and thanks for taking time. Thank you. And yeah, to, to, to get back to, how people can get ahold of me. just, you know, on my social media or on local ai hub.ca. Okay. I'll definitely link that in the show notes. Well, we so appreciate you listening to this edition of The Stuck No More Voices podcast. Yeah. Check the links for Eugene's, contacts and you also can check the link for our new. CEO voice assessment. seeing where you stand and if you're ready for a platform to make you go from just a mom and pop invisible, but to presenting your message to the world. someone is looking for you and your voice as we train you. How to speak from your scars, not your wounds, and you get to speak to the person you once were. So thanks so much until the next edition, I'll be talking to you and The Stuck No More Voices podcast.