Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

The Human Algorithm: Five Experts Turn AI Into a Brand Authority Engine

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM • Season 5 • Episode 41

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Tired of AI that adds noise instead of value? We open the doors to the ICABA AI Accelerator, a four‑week sprint designed to help professionals reclaim 20+ hours a month, scale content that sounds like them, and build authority through human‑led systems. Rather than flood you with demos, we focus on judgment, workflows, and data—so AI works for you, not the other way around.

We start by resetting how you think about tools. Abdul Muhammad introduces a simple framework—augment, decide, act—that puts human values and context first. You’ll learn why clarity beats speed and how to design everyday workflows that reduce cognitive load and deliver consistent results. Then, Nilda Thomas maps the ten core skills of the AI‑ready professional and leads a hands‑on lab to craft a practical 90‑day plan. Expect clear priorities, role‑based prompts, and a policy‑minded approach that fits real workloads.

Next, we go deep on brand and personalization. Your Brand, Your Voice, Your GPT shows you how to train AI with your assets—PDFs, decks, tone, and goals—so your assistant understands who you are and what you’re building. We also widen the lens beyond ChatGPT to explore where different platforms shine, helping you choose a small, purposeful stack that aligns with your work, wellness, and risk profile. Finally, Stephanie demystifies data quality, ownership, and IP, then lays out simple governance and legal guardrails to protect your organization without slowing innovation. Clean inputs, clear policies, and auditable workflows transform AI from a liability into leverage.

If you want authority over automation, personalization over generic answers, and outcomes over hype, this session is your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs clarity, and leave a review telling us the one workflow you want to fix next.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/

See you next time on Follow The Brand!

SPEAKER_01:

Hello everyone and welcome to the special session on the Follow the Brand. We're going to bring authority, not just efficiency, inside the Aikaba AI Accelerator. And I want you to welcome everybody to this because this program is designed not just to teach you AI, but to position you as an authentic, efficient, and undeniable authority in your industry. In just four weeks, you'll implement tools that reclaim 20 plus hours of your time, multiply your content output, and build scalable AI systems that sound like you, work like you, and move as fast as you. And you will hear directly from each of our four experts leading this sprint. So I'd like to bring up the master of the hour, Mr. Hutchinson himself, the brain thought leader of ICABA. So, Jerome, would you like to kick us off, please?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'd love to. And uh, I'm going to uh, if I can, uh share my screen and tell you just a little bit and show you a little bit about the ICABA World Network, which is the world's leading collaborative success ecosystem for black professionals and entrepreneurs. As you know, ladies and gentlemen, today's world is all about relationships, relationships, relationships. In order to be able to move your career, move your business forward, the most important thing today is relationship capital. If you're not building that kind of equity in your network and in your ecosystem, then you know you're going to be standing still. The world is moving fast and you got to move fast with it, building relationships, cultivating, nurturing them into really productive, valuable ecosystem. And so today, as you just heard from you know one of our AI accelerator group members, uh Grant McGall, we're using AI to be more productive and to speed up and accelerate that process. And so we are very excited to make sure that we're able to host this group that we've created, the ICABA Accelerator Group. And we want to deliver to you those opportunities for you to be able to enhance your skill set and to become, if you will, a leader in your industry as Grant said. So I'm happy to be here. We're here to share and to have you a place to come to our ICABA community where you can not only learn from these pros, but you can actually connect, collaborate, and be part of a global community that they're already a part of, as well as folks from around the world. So I'm glad to be here. Thank you guys for all the great work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you, Hutch, for bringing this to life for so many people. So let's talk about week one. What is week one all about? This is going to be about about creating your new AI lifestyle. No theory, just practical wins that unlock your time from day one. So I would like to bring to the stage now Mr. Abdul Mohammed and also Neil DeThomas. So, Abdul, talk about week one for us, please.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so as you mentioned, Grant, week one is all about the AI lifestyle. Now, AI is everywhere right now, right? But let me ask you something honestly. Is it actually making your life easier? I ask myself that every single day. For me, it feels like every day there's more tools, there's more noise, there's more pressure for me to keep up. I mean, listening to things, podcasters that I can keep up, but that's a problem. Now, right away, I looked at it as this overwhelming conundrum for me, but AI isn't really failing us. We're just not being taught how to live, work with it well. And so that's what this first part is all about. I'm Abdul Muhammad, the president and chief growth officer of MDM Ventures, and we provide growth strategy and branding for fractional C-suite consulting for mindful leaders, executives, and community leaders. So I'm a socialpreneur that blends health and wellness and mindful leadership, empowering leaders with a business mindset so that the marketing is able to build a global culture of health and wealth. I help entrepreneurs, creators, and community leaders with neurotraining, breath work, and brain-based coaching that leverages AI and innovation as a force multiplier for content, community, and commerce. And so for me, when I look at what AI is and what it does, the problem is right now, most Americans are using AI backwards. They start with tools instead of clarity, they automate before deciding, and they stack platforms instead of designing workflows. And that's why people are feeling overwhelmed instead of empowered by the AI. Now, the real skill isn't knowing what AI can do because there's plenty of YouTube uh videos and podcasts and pseudo-experts out there that can tell you what AI can do. But the real skill that we like focusing on here is knowing when to use it, how to use it, and when not to, right? And so that's why we created a live four-week sprint called Optimizing That AI Lifestyle. That's the focus. This isn't about a technical course. This is not about learning every single tool that's out there, and it definitely is not about moving faster just to move fast, right? I'm all about breathing in, letting out, and creating. And this is about integrating AI into your real life in a way that provides daily workflows and decision making and optimizes your productivity in a way that feels human, ethical, and also sustainable. And right now, let's be honest, most people aren't feeling that way with this AI overwhelm and noise. What makes a difference with what we do is we teach one core framework that changes everything. And I call it augment, decide, and act. And what that does is simply AI helps us augment our thinking, right? Our human intelligence. It allows us to expand on the options that are available for us and uncover patterns that our brains may not see, right? And so this allows us to take that information and organize ideas in a way that allows us to apply our judgment. And then we decide based on our human values, context, and lived experience, which is something that AI, quite frankly, can never replicate. So the only thing after you do is using AI to execute clearly and efficiently our human intelligence. And that's how we stay in control versus this whole fear that AI is going to somehow take over with this super intelligence, this soul intelligence that we've been blessed with, that we've been born with, that cannot ever be outsourced, is really what the focus is. How AI works for you and not the other way around. And so we believe that workflow simplicity beats tool stacking every single time. You don't need more apps, you just need clear systems. And so, what participants will walk away from by the end of this sprint is that you'll have clear AI-assisted workflows that you can actually use in your life, right? And I call this lifestyle synthesis. This allows you to have a human intelligence as your decision framework that you can trust. Come on now, you guys know there's so much misinformation out there. You're watching videos that you can't even trust anymore. You need a framework that roots you in your human intelligence and the values that cannot be outsourced or machine learned. And this allows you to lessen the mental load, reduce the cortisol, and allow you to just breathe more freely. Now, we don't need more tools and technology. We need a responsible way to work with AI that aligns with our values. And that alignment is what's going to empower people. And that's what we aim for in our course. This is for professionals, leaders, creatives, and educators who want clarity and alignment, not chaos and more tools. This is for you. You want to feel confident using AI and not dependent on it? This is for you. This is for people who care about equity, ownership, and long-term impact, and not that get rich quick scheme and uh stuff. This is not about people looking for shortcuts or hacks and all of that hype. This is real tough now. That human connection that we're building, and we're building skill, not chasing trends. And so I like to just invite all of you all, if you're ready to stop reaching to HI or reacting to AI, right? And start to design how this fits into your life in a seamless way, whether it's work or life, I'd love to invite you to our sprint where we'll learn together, build together, and leave with systems that actually last. So join us for optimizing the AI lifestyle and let's make AI make sense for you. AI should support your thinking, not replace it. And clarity and alignment is the real competitive advantage. The more tools don't create better systems, better thinking and human-led intelligence, soul intelligence is what makes that connection. AI doesn't need to be impressive, it just needs to be useful. Right? Equity in AI starts with access to understanding, and that's what we take care of here. Our focus at the Aikaba Accelerator is automation without intention is just faster chaos. And no one needs more chaos, right? Again, automation, all of this bots and everything without intention, right? It's just faster chaos. And so we teach AI in a human language. We break it down. This is AI for real life, not just tech demos. We focus on judgment, not tools. We focus on human intelligence and alignment, human-centered, practical, responsible AI use designed for how people actually work. Not how a machine is telling you how to work and how to live, right? Everybody, everybody bring their human intelligence to it and leverage the technology to scale. And so most people don't need more AI tools, they just need better workflows.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Thank you so much, uh, do I got a partner in crime there? And I and I shouldn't even call it crime, but that right there was very, very useful. Nilda, tell us what we're gonna be doing in week one.

SPEAKER_05:

Hi everyone, I'm Nilda Thomas, and have you ever noticed that most people are using AI, but very few actually are working well with it? And that's what I'm addressing in my upcoming session. Clear your your year AI empowered planning without the overwhelm. This isn't uh a tools demo, it's about how AI fits in your real life, your daily workflows, your productivity, and the decisions you're making every day as a professional or a business owner. In this session, I'm gonna walk you through 10 core skills to define the AI ready professional. Skills like judgment, strategic planning, problem framing, workflow integration, and others. It's all about knowing how you think to decide and lead with AI. And then we go into our hands-on session. And it's a guided workshop where I use my clear framework to help participants clarify what actually matters. Leveraging AI as a thinking partner, evaluating priorities, aligning actions to reality and a roadmap that you'll have in the next 90 days. People walk away with clarity, focus, and plan that they can actually execute without feeling overwhelmed. Additionally, I'll be sharing a few AI tools that you can use, like role-based and industry prompt generators, keeping you and also to help you keep organized and other tools as well. Again, I'm Milda Thomas. I'm a certified AI consultant and chief AI officer at Business AI Consulting, a company that I own. And I'm also the creator of the AI Workforce Pro. And we provide and help businesses integrate AI into their operations through role-based and industry training workflows. And then we begin with an AI assessment so we can understand where your gaps are. And then we take you through your results and help you create an AI strategy and AI policy, along with implementing where to integrate AI into your operations before we implement. The live session is complimentary, it's practical, and it's designed for real people with real workloads. And if you want to stop experimenting with AI and start using it intentionally, this session is for you. So you can register now. And I hope to see you there. Back to you, Grant.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, that is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. You can see that week one is gonna set the foundation for what we are building for the long run, not the short run. I'm gonna bring up Angela Ree Jane. She also is working with us, and she's actually one of the brain leaders, I would say, in what we're building and talk about week two.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you for that. Thank you, Grant. And before we jump in, I just want to take this time to thank you so much for generously hosting us and the team for your time, for your thought, and your leadership as we continue to bring this work to the public. Your guidance has really been invaluable as we shape this first ICA AI accelerators sprint. And we truly appreciate you and your partnership. We are so excited about this, about what this brand is going to bring. The IKEA Accelerators is different, it's simple. We don't just talk about AI. We activate it, we implement it, we empower people with it. Our accelerators edge is grounded in five separate pillars. We apply what others only talk about. We teach AI in human language. You heard Abdul talk about that. We lead with responsibility, and you'll see that as we go through our other sprint series. We build real capability, not hype. And we leverage the collective power of practitioners. This group of professionals, of builders, of innovators, master users, that's who we are in the ICO AI Accelerator Group, and that's the expertise and the knowledge that we're bringing to you. And we use these tools and this knowledge every day in what we do, and we're bringing it to you. So, Grant, session two is titled Your Brand, Your Voice, and Your GPT. And a lot of people are using AI, but not many people feel like it really represents them. Why is personal personalization such a game changer when it comes to productivity and trust in AI?

SPEAKER_01:

That is so important. I can't wait for people to jump in to week two because it's super important. You have uh, if you're just utilizing an LLM, Large Language model, basically you're using it in its generic state, meaning it doesn't not know who you are. It doesn't know your past, your present, your future. You haven't given it any information in order to have uh a more detailed response. So it is your your job, if you want it to be an assistant for you, you've got to give it enough detail. And we're gonna talk about this and not only in the AI world, but in your personal life, right? You've got to be able to personalize what you're doing to different differentiate yourself in the workplace that you're looking to influence. You've got to bring your vision to life, and that is what I'm talking about. How do we bring our AI to life to work for us by us? Put it like that. So we're not getting a generic response whatsoever. So I'm gonna teach you how to brand yourself, right? And utilize your AI as a platform in which you can make that vision very visible to others. And let me ask you this I'll ask this to my audience. How many of you are tired of trying to stand out online only to sound like every other business coach, consultant, or executive on LinkedIn? And the truth is, most AI trainees will teach you how to use prompts, but they don't teach AI to understand you. And that is what this week's session is all about.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you so much. And you mentioned personalizing it. How do they how can you expect people to save time and money when you're talking about training your AI dragon?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my God, that that is a great question because that is how you're gonna save it time. If you take the time up front to build out your model yourself, feed it what it wants. It wants data, give it your personalized data so it doesn't have to search it out like online. If it's just using web traffic, if you're not very searchable online, it's not gonna give you a very customized response. But if you begin to fill it with your uh PDFs, your PowerPoints, everything that's about you and what you are about, your resume, everything that says, hey, this is who I am, and I want you to be my assistant for me to help me achieve this particular goal. Now you're playing with fire. Now you have someone who knows who you are and where you want to go, and they can assist you in getting there. Remember, the AI is pulling from a world database, right? But now it can then take that world database and help you personalize your particular goal and workspace and workflows that you're using, utilizing it for. And I'm gonna teach you how to do this step by step. We have a 60-minute um session on Tuesday, right? That'll be the first session. And I'm gonna give you the theory behind all of this. I'm gonna show you some practical skill sets, some strategies, some tactics. Then on Thursday, we have a 90-minute session. We're actually gonna get deep into it. We're gonna roll up our sleeves, we're gonna get into this, and you are gonna build out your customized and personalized GPT. If you're using ChatGPT, you can be using Claude, my personal favorite. I love Claude. And but you can have other LLMs that you're using, but you've got to know how to customize and personalize it so it becomes a tool that you need to succeed and to do things quicker, better, faster.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you so much, Grant. Really appreciate that. After Grant's fantastic session, and he mentioned another um tool besides ChatGPT, we're gonna have Charles Smart, who's gonna be showing us what's out there beyond ChatGPT. And this is where participants will really be able to begin to see the full landscape of what AI can actually do. A lot of people are kind of stuck with ChatGPT. And look, it's a great tool. It's what I started off learning how to do. And Chat actually told me, mine is named Manixa. She actually told me, you have now exceeded your usage, you need to find another tool. So most people stop at one tool and assume that that's the limit that they can go. But this session expands the mindset that he's gonna explore AI platforms, the tool use cases that are beyond Chat GPT, helping attendees understand where different tools can shine, how they can be used intentionally, and what's possible when you move beyond a single interface. And speaking about that mindset, uh, we're gonna briefly bring um Abdul back to talk about some of the things, some of the other things that we can do when we look beyond Chat GPT.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Angela. And when you really look at, and I love some of the things that Grant was saying, where it's it's how you leverage the GPT in order to be there for you, your assistant. And like, how many of us are only uh living life for work? That's a dismal way of being, right? Like, there's so many different things out there. So, for example, I'm an advocate of a culture of health and wealth, and what that means is that I prioritize my wellness over making money, understanding that there is no money if you don't have this inner wealth. So, one of the ways, instead of just using chat GPT, AI, you can personalize it to align with your wellness goals, for example, right? And so when you look at um how and who you are as a human being, how can GPTs and how can AI be a force multiplier for your character, right? All the world's a stage, and what AI does for us is it allows us to really tap into who we are and get it out there in ways that are far beyond the workplace. This becomes lifestyle synthesis as an artist and as a creator. I make music, right? And I don't use Chat GPT to make my music, right? Chat GPT is great, but all of these LLMs, as we've been talking about, are large language models that have specific uh use cases. Now, the truth is they all are catching up, right? So I'm just gonna mention a couple. We talked about Chat GPT, and I'm gonna pick on Claude because we know that that's a favorite. And then, of course, you can't go anywhere without hearing about you know uh Googles. Uh GPT, right? Gemini. And so I'll just start with those three. And then, of course, perplexity. We like, you know, getting into those things, but they all have different use cases. So it's all about understanding, just like life is. First, you got to tap into who you are. It's not about the GPT. Now, who you are, and getting clear on that determines what GPT out there or what AI tools you should use. And so if you're someone that's more creative, for example, that cares a little bit more about leveraging different modalities, video plus audio plus music, the GPT that might be best for you might be Gemini, right? Because it's multi-modal and that's it has a little bit more advantage over Chat GPT with that. But if you don't want a lot of hallucinations and if you want a GPT that actually listens to you and pays attention, it doesn't just make stuff up, you know. Gemini is great because it's it's awesome, it can do all these different multimodal in inputs and then pull it all out. But it's like a teenage kid doesn't want to listen to you. You say, Hey, search the web and verify that, and it goes, Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. We we don't need to search. Well, we just moving, right? Whereas Chat GPT, right? If you want to have someone that's a little bit more obedient because that's the information that you need, you gotta understand that you better stick with Chat GPT because it pays attention, it's a little bit more obedient to you, and then filtering out information, leveraging uh notebook LM, for example, that allows you to isolate and contain the information inside that GPT so that there's no chance that it's pulling in something outside of that container that you put in, right? And so live your life has a lot to do with the GPTs that you use, what your lifestyle is.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and let me say this this session is not about chasing the next shiny tool. It's not about overwhelming you with options, it's really about capability awareness, knowing what exists, when to use it, and how to choose the tools that support your productivity. At the end of this session, you'll be able to understand the broader AI ecosystem, recognize which tools align with the different needs and workflows you have, and feel more confident navigating beyond one platform. That's really what it's about. It's about opening doors to smarter choices. Now we're going to move on to session four. That's Stephanie and Marcia. And Stephanie, why don't you tell us about this data and governance, the sexiest part of AI everyone ignores until it's too late.

SPEAKER_03:

So as you're doing AI and you're prompting and you're figuring out which LLM to use, um none of that is impactful if you don't have a handle on your data. And I'm not talking about the data that the AI produces, I'm talking about the data that the AI uses to produce the in the responses. So if you don't have clean data, if your data is not set up correctly, what will happen is that the AI is going to take that and it's gonna magnify the problems with your data. So we're gonna talk about data governance, data cleanliness, where the data lives, who owns the data. It's important to talk about IP. So you don't want to be using data from some uh from somebody else that's violating IP and copyright um laws. Um, it's important to know where the data lives because you want to make sure that um the data is clean. And people go, Stephanie, like what are you talking about with this clean data? And we're gonna go into details about what clean data is, what dirty data is. And there is a difference. I spent over uh 30 years, 30 years um doing um IT quality, and one of the biggest things I had to do was creating data to do testing. And I've seen where when you have dirty data, you get um in um incorrect responses, and that only with clean, properly defined data. And then data has to live somewhere. You don't want it commingle with things that it shouldn't commingle in with. So putting a fence around that data. All of that's important. And um, you know, without having a great data strategy, you can't build out your AI solutions because the AI agents need data in order to um do their jobs well.

SPEAKER_04:

And Stephanie, when you're talking about data, we're also talking about that data being better to represent our voice and what we have to say versus all of the other voices that have created biases within the AI programming system. Is that a correct statement?

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. Um again, right? What LMs did was just comb the internet with everything that they could get their hands on. And so whatever questionable things are on the internet are now inside LLMs. And so by ensuring that you're managing your data, putting it in a in a small language model, a data vault that's separate from what's on the internet. So think about if you're if you have a portal at work where the data in that portal has been vetted, certified, it's accurate. You know, if you pull something out there, it's gonna be correct. That's what we're talking about. And we'll get into more details about what does that look like. And to Grant's point, um on Thursday, what what we're gonna be focusing on is your use cases. So again, right, uh training, especially AI training, is not impactful if you don't have context by which you're using the AI to um use using the the context for by which the AI can respond to and having the right data. So we're gonna take your use cases. So the first the the session from Abdul, the session from Grant, what and and Nelda, what will happen is that that becomes the input for our session.

SPEAKER_04:

Great, thank you so much. And then the second part of your session is talking about governance, and that's really important addressing one of the most overlooked but really critical parts of the AI adoption, the legal mistakes that people make when using AI, both personally and professionally. Her session will walk through the most common legal, legal missteps individuals and organizations make when using AI tools. One thing, Stephanie, you brought up was relying so much on what the internet is bringing in. And we know the internet has mistakes and misinformation. So if that's what's feeding your LLM, then you're being fed that information, and that's part of the output that you're going to get. Um often unintentionally, this information is used, but it is included in how your content is created, shared, reused, and relied upon without fully understanding those legal implications. So what she'll do is she'll break down where people unknowingly expose themselves or their organizations to risk, how people and professionals' AI use can blur legal boundaries, and that's really important. And then what practical guardrails individuals should have in place before these types of problems arise. This is not going to be about legal theory, it's not going to be scare tactics. It's really about real-world awareness, helping people understand how to use AI confidently, responsibly, and with clarity around their ownership, liability, and professional accountability. By the end of the session, attendees will have a clearer understanding of what not to do when using AI, how to avoid common legal pitfalls, and how to protect themselves and their organizations while still using AI effectively. We are so excited about this. We are really convinced that this is going to be a game changer for individuals who are really trying to figure out how I can make AI work for me instead of me spending all this time trying to learn how to work through and navigate through AI. So, Grant, I'm going to toss this ball back to you to help us wrap up this great session.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I want to thank everybody for participating with us. I want all of you to really think hard about your AI journey and what you feel you can gain as value as we just took you with an inside look at the ICABA AI Accelerator for Experts, for transformations, and a system built not just to teach you AI, but to help you to lead with it. And so registration will now be open. Seats are limited. So keep in touch with us. Make sure that you are our outcomes driven. And I want to see you as a student inside this ICABA accelerator. This isn't about learning tools, it's about building authority. So let's go.