#TheTechHustle Podcast 🎙

Backstage with BobbyD featuring Alicia Lyttle

• BobbyD, D'Hustle and Raymond...don't call him RayRay

Share episode

Are you ready to multiply yourself a thousand times? What if you could compete with industry giants on a shoestring budget? The future isn't coming—it's already here.

Meet Alicia Lyttle, the self-proclaimed "Queen of AI," who's transforming how entrepreneurs approach business in the age of artificial intelligence. In this eye-opening conversation from the Black Wealth Summit 2025, Alicia reveals why AI isn't just another tech trend—it's the great equalizer that's rewriting the rules of business success.

Alicia's journey began when she witnessed IBM Watson defeat Jeopardy champions, but her true AI awakening came with ChatGPT's release. Recognizing its revolutionary potential, she canceled all appointments for two weeks to master this technology—a decision that doubled her business in just half a year and put her on track to quadruple it this year.

From training AI to write in your unique voice to creating autonomous agents that can attend 1,000 Zoom meetings simultaneously, Alicia demystifies how these tools level the playing field for small businesses. "Back in the day, we'd pay big firms lots of money to do what these tools are doing now," she explains, highlighting how AI democratizes access to sophisticated business capabilities.

The conversation goes beyond theory, offering practical examples anyone can implement immediately. Discover how Alicia uses ChatGPT for everything from changing smart lock batteries to identifying the right car parts—saving time, reducing stress, and eliminating unnecessary research. Learn how AI agents can translate languages in real-time, answer phones, generate leads, and create a multiplication effect that exponentially increases your productivity.

But perhaps most importantly, Alicia delivers a sobering truth: "It's not going to be AI that steals your job. It's going to be the person that uses AI." As corporations increasingly prioritize AI-savvy employees, embracing these tools isn't optional for those who want to remain competitive.

Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just beginning your journey, this conversation offers a roadmap to leveraging AI for personal and professional growth. Start simple, start today, and discover how AI can help you close the wealth gap by competing on an entirely new level.

Grab Alicia's free book "ChatGPT Made Easy" at AliciaLyttle.com and begin your AI transformation journey now.

Support the show

🚀 Join the Hustle!

Speaker 1:

I often call AI the great equalizer, especially that ChatGPT now is free. Right, you can use the free version. I recommend the $20 a month version but you can use it for free.

Speaker 1:

But you know, back in the day when I was doing marketing, if we'd want to get these type of tools or data from something, we would have to pay a lot of money to big firms to be able to do what these tools are doing now. And just looking at what they're capable of, we can compete on different levels if we stop for a minute and pay attention and go all in on AI. So if you want to make yourself future-proof, you better get into AI, and if you're a business owner, I mean.

Speaker 2:

Level up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, level up because you need to.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, welcome, welcome. What up D-Hustle? What's going on? What's going on? Player. Beautiful day today.

Speaker 1:

Where we at, though.

Speaker 2:

Again, I'm not in the beach, You're not at the beach.

Speaker 1:

I'm not at the beach, but we're here. We're in South Florida, Miami.

Speaker 2:

We are at the Black Wealth Summit 2025, second conference here at Florida Memorial University. And guess what? Fmu is the only HBCU here in South Florida.

Speaker 1:

Did you know that? No, I didn't know that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've been announcing it all day. But, they, graciously, are hosting the black wealth summit here and we have a special guest here. We got alicia little. Bring her to the stage oh hey, how you like the little introduction, I do I love it.

Speaker 1:

I love it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's my guy right there um, first of all I want to say thank you so much for hanging out with us absolutely I know uh the audience. She is a killer speaker and we just grabbed her from off the stage and came right backstage, and right quick, because she's primed and ready to go to give you all some more insights, and I can't wait until you hear some more about her. But, alicia, tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 1:

Give us a quick introduction. Wow, where do I start? I'm addicted to AI. Let's start with that. I absolutely love everything artificial intelligence. I've been an entrepreneur for the past 25 years. I started off in digital marketing and content creation, creating courses, selling them, online speaking and training, but when I really got into AI, I was like this is game changing for everyone.

Speaker 1:

I made a pivot out of digital marketing and went all into AI integration, ai solutions and training, and it was the best decision for me. I absolutely love it and look at the time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure that's an amazing journey and I and the fact that you are talking about ai, oh, I'm so, so happy. So our show is about technology, engineering and the culture and how they intersect I love it. One topic that we cover all the time is ai um, but all three of us are technologists. We've been at the keyboard in some capacity for more than 20 years, so we've seen the evolution.

Speaker 1:

I'm an 80s baby, so we've seen when the internet was first created to now where we are with the internet versus.

Speaker 2:

Hey, this is the beginning of the AI journey and hopefully everybody catches this wave, but tell us how you first discovered AI, got interested in it and what really like drived your shift in terms of you pursuing it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so back back in 2017, I was speaking at Walmart's event, so they have an internal event for their employees called Walmart Tech Live, so I was one of the speakers and the speaker in front of me he was 15 years old at the time, so first of all, I was like wait a second, a 15 year old he was talking about IBM's tool called IBM Watson, and in his video that he showed on stage, he showed how this AI tool, ibm Watson, beat the nation's best Jeopardy champions in a game of Jeopardy.

Speaker 1:

So, I'm watching this computer system that they have, you know, standing up in between the two humans answering the questions and just like boom, boom, boom and it won a million dollars. I don't know what they did with a million dollars, but it won a million dollars.

Speaker 2:

What did they do with it?

Speaker 1:

They reinvested it. But when I saw that I was like, wow, look how that tool mimicked human behavior so well and beat the nation's best champions. And then I said I need to pay attention to what this artificial intelligence is, because I was definitely in tech, but tech side, more of tech and digital marketing driving traffic, website search engine optimization and I was missing out on all this AI stuff. So I started using tools that had AI in it. I started using tools that were called Jasper and Writer and they were a little bit clunky compared to when ChatGPT came out so fast forward to November of 2022. And one of my students in my trainings called me and she was like, oh, you taught us Jasper and Ryder, but this is much better.

Speaker 1:

And today's day number one, it just came out. You need to pay attention. I was like yeah, yeah. And then on day two she called me back Did you do it? I said no, I didn't. She's like, no, stop everything and do it. So I stopped everything and I went to chat GPT and I said, wow, you know what the other tools that I'm using, I'd have to shift over here, make a headline, then write this, but this one can keep going in sequential order, doing what I'm asking it to do in the same train of thought. But the content that came out wasn't good. It was generic, it was robotic, just like the other AI tools. But I was like what if I could train this tool to mimic me? Would I ever have to write anything, ever again, from scratch? So I locked myself up for two weeks. I canceled every appointment that I had and I just went all in on just really learning how to master ChatGPT, and that made all the difference just giving it focus for two weeks.

Speaker 1:

And then I had speaking events after that and I called the promoters and I said I am not speaking on digital marketing anymore, it's only AI.

Speaker 2:

The game has changed now I know.

Speaker 1:

And they were like you can speak on whatever you want to speak on.

Speaker 2:

Alicia.

Speaker 1:

And I was like okay, cool, and that's really started just getting me known in that AI space, and then I just feel like you know me and AI tools are one we just blend well together. So I I just love it and what it can do for entrepreneurs and tech professionals and even somebody who just needs a little bit of help in their life, has questions about doing something. It can help us with so many things, not just the work aspect of it, or the business aspect of it, but I use it every day in my personal life as well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. So like I'm so grateful to hear, like the evolution, but also how quick you've seen like the eventual right adoption uses for it and then locking yourself up and making sure that you learn it and put the work in and then training it and developing or fine-tuning it so it can sound more like you Give a round of applause, thank you thank you, thank you. That's why when I look at her profile, it says Queen of AI. Yes, for sure. So where did that title come from, the Queen of AI?

Speaker 1:

Sure sure. So I was speaking at an event. It was in Baltimoretimore maryland I was speaking, an event and this was early 2023, maybe january, february 2023 and I was showing them um, we didn't have a name for it even back then ai agents, but I was showing them myself and two ais talking behind me yeah and they were saying I'm jamal on alicia's team, I'm tiffany on alicia's team and I was showing them all this ai stuff and doing a workshop, and then a lady in the audience her name was, uh, deborah ashley.

Speaker 1:

She was like you are the queen of ai and everybody in the room was like you are, you are and it just stuck from there.

Speaker 2:

Round of applause because let me tell you it's. It's like eye-opening once you interact with this technology and you see what its capabilities are. Not just a surface level like hey, draft me an email and it regurgitates that, but the ability to be aware of a level of consciousness. And for me, as soon as I started to see that, I'm like yo and all I got to do is use this interface called typing and texting. And then it gets to that Like how was that, when you first like start to encounter, and then you were like really just diving more into it, right, right.

Speaker 1:

So when I first went to it and I asked it to do something, were like really just diving more into it, right. So when I first went to it and I asked it to do something, like the content that came back was correct, it wasn't that it was incorrect, yeah, but it wasn't me. I'm fun, but chat gpt was not fun. It was like unlocking the secrets to the transformation of. I do not talk like that so I would start.

Speaker 2:

My sentence was like hey, hey, hey, you know.

Speaker 1:

So I sat there and I was like, well, what if I could train it to talk like me? So I started feeding it my content and said you know, I've hired a ghostwriter before and paid thousands of dollars for ghostwriters.

Speaker 2:

I was like all right.

Speaker 1:

When I sat with the ghostwriter, I had to give her my content. We had to break down my writing style and tone. I had to pay her thousands of dollars to do that and it still didn't sound as much like me as I wanted it to. But I knew the process. So I was like what if I did that process, pretending that ChatGPT was a ghostwriter?

Speaker 1:

sitting across the table and saying okay, here's my content, tell me about my writing style and tone and what came back to me. I was like this is exactly like me. And then I said, okay, now write the speech in that style and tone that I just gave you. And it did it. And I was like boom.

Speaker 2:

That light bulb came on.

Speaker 1:

I was like this is fire. This is exactly what I need. Since that day, I've been training people how to do that so that you're never putting out generic robotic writing. So I used an AI detector to detect the content before. So, before you know, when it said unlocking the transformation, it came back as 100% AI generated. But then, after I wrote it as me, in my style and tone, it came back and said this passes as human written content. I was like this was written by ChachiBT, but it's beating the AI detectors saying it's human written content.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what?

Speaker 1:

That's where we at right and that was uh a few years ago it was 2022, yes, 2022, so about a year and a half ago, but as fast as ai is iterating that's, it's a different era it is so how do?

Speaker 2:

you feel in terms of where ai is now, and then we're definitely going to be talking about how we can make ai uh help us as we're building wealth, and development.

Speaker 1:

But how do?

Speaker 2:

you feel where AI is right now?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you know that really was the foundation of me learning AI. But it's still the foundation where I teach people like never put out content, no matter what, with any AI tool without it sounding like you no generic robotic writing over here but how AI has just developed so quickly since then. I mean, I look at the developments now and I'm like this is 20 years of tech developments in two and a half. It's developing so quickly and now we're using things like AI agents. We're getting AI to do things for us. I used a tool that can order Instacart for me. Log into my account, take something, a recipe, order everything, you see it and it's delivered to the door.

Speaker 2:

I'm like this is the life that I like I know right.

Speaker 1:

I have a robot that vacuums my floors. I'm all in on the living life to be more efficient and more productive. I want to use my time to do something else sweep my floor, then order my groceries, and then I'm looking at anything that I need to get done in my personal life. Like anytime I have a question, I look at how much time I can save by using AI. So here's a quick example. I have a smart lock on my door. You know, trying to be all technical Connected.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So I have a smart lock on my door and it kept giving me on my phone that the battery was low. I'm like I don't know how to change a battery and I don't read the instruction book. I'm sure you read all your instruction manuals book.

Speaker 2:

I'm sure you read all your instruction manuals. That's the reason why everything's broken, because I didn't read the instructions. I'll tell you how to fix it all now right. Go ahead, give it to me.

Speaker 1:

So I took a picture with my phone, chatgpt, put the picture in ChatGPT and I said this is my smart lock. It's saying the battery's low. How do I change the battery? Tell me in the simplest form. And so it said look on the two sides, push those in, pop it up. I was like bam, popped it up. And then now I'm looking at it and I'm like now what am I supposed to do, instead of trying to figure it out myself, picture now what am I supposed to do.

Speaker 1:

It said see the tab at the top that says battery pull, pull it and I pulled it, put the new batteries in, put it all back in and I was like that saved me so much time manual or I'd have to go to YouTube. But now ChatGPT just told me in a minute later my problem is solved.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

And so I went in my kitchen. You know that kitchen drawer you have with all the instructions. Boom recycling bin. I don't need it anymore.

Speaker 2:

Threw it all out. That's probably the same, because I usually throw all my instructions out as soon as I get them, like I'm done building stuff.

Speaker 1:

That is hilarious, you'd be surprised at the things that it can do. So any problems that I've had. I'm asking ChatGPT for the answers and now I'm spending my time doing other things and it saves a huge amount of money.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. And the way that you're describing it is perfect to kind of correlate to where we were two, three years ago, because we would have to have gone online, google, type in what is the version of this lock and go look for the version model, right, type it in and then look for the pdf, right? Oh, I don't have a pdf viewer installed. Now, I gotta install that. And now you open it up, or what page that'd be on, oh where, like to now, where all I do is just take a picture that's right and then it doesn't search, it tells me and it tells me hey, press these two little buttons.

Speaker 2:

Actually, you see that little time right there, that's not supposed to be there, because you're supposed to take it off when you first install it. Pull that, pull that right that's amazing, you know.

Speaker 1:

So I went to auto zone the other day and I wanted to change my cabin air filter myself. I'm, you know yeah, and a woman, so I'm like all right, so now I'm in auto zone and do you know they still have the book to flip through to find your cabin air filter I'm thinking to to myself I could help them so much with some AI.

Speaker 1:

But anyway. So I'm in there and I'm like I'm not going to flip through the book. So I take a picture of all of the cabin air filters and I was like I have a Mustang Mach-E and I want a new cabin air filter because I saw on TikTok that you should change these, so I want a new one. And I said which one should I get? And it it actually told me shelf three in the middle, this number on it, that's for your maki and the model pulled it off the shelf, but I verify so I took a picture again.

Speaker 1:

Did I get the right one? Yes, you got the right one. And it reiterated this is for the mustang maki. That's amazing I went to check out while the other people are at the counter asking they're in like the line asking what they need to get when I want to be like, just pull out chachi, yeah you know, keep it moving.

Speaker 2:

That's amazing and and this is the thing that's that's really cool is the use case for it, and I think our community is going to start to really like light bulb. Come on, because that's where I feel like, in terms of when we talk about gap and closing that wealth gap is utilizing tools like AI. So how do you feel like that's going to help us in terms of being able to close that gap?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so the thing is that I often call AI the great equalizer, especially that ChatGPT now is free right.

Speaker 1:

You can use the free version. I recommend the $20 a month version but you can use it for free. But back in the day, when I was doing marketing, if we'd want to get these type of tools or data from something, we would have to pay a lot of money to big firms to be able to do what these tools are doing now and just looking at what they're capable of, we can compete on different levels if we stop for a minute and pay attention and go all in on AI. So as a small business owner, you can compete now with the biggest of the marketing firms because you tell AI. So let's say, you're writing a proposal, right, you're writing a proposal to get a contract. And so you say, okay, I'm writing a proposal responding to this request for proposals and I want to fill out this contract. And then you can have chat. Gpt say all right, well, who would be the top three companies who are going to respond to this contract?

Speaker 1:

And chat, gpt will tell you and you can say pretend that you are that company and respond to the contract. I want to see how that company would respond to the contract. And you're like what in the world? And then you're like now here's my company information. Keeping that in mind, respond as my company and it will respond to that contract, thinking about things that you never thought. And then you ask it the question if I were to win this contract, what information do you need to know from me in order to rewrite the contract in a way that it would win? And you just keep working with AI to say am I going to win now, what's my grade? Pretend that you are the two people that are reviewing this contract, what grade would you give me?

Speaker 1:

And it's going to say a, c and you say, well, how do I get to a B, how do I get to an A? And it will just keep giving you the information so you can win, so you can win. So you really need to look at the fact that we can compete now on different levels and we can show up on different levels and what we thought we needed to hire maybe a copywriter for or a business coach for, we can now say well, if you know how to use it correctly, chatgpt can be my copywriter and my business coach. I don't need a graphic designer, I can use Midjourney or Ideogram, so now we can have complete teams that we thought we needed, with AI just being a one-person show. So it's a different space for us and what we need to think about is, as a community, paying attention to it and not living in that place of fear that you get left behind, because I can tell you, I teach in corporations and government agencies and I upskill their employees and you're hearing time and time again they are laying off people who do not have AI skills or who do not want to upskill themselves to hire people who do yeah so if you want to make yourself future-proof, you better get into AI facts and if you're a business owner, I mean level up

Speaker 2:

yeah, level up because you need to yeah, we say that on our show all the time. It's not going to be ai that steals your job. It's going to be the person that uses ai, that's raymond, don't call him ray ray he's in the cut right now but, uh, one thing that I think, uh, you mentioned briefly, um and definitely in terms of closing the wealth gap I think that's a great avenue and pathway in terms of like, uh, working towards things that you didn't think you had access to before.

Speaker 2:

Now, ai is that force multiplier that's giving you access, so that you can get those bigger contracts. Now we're going to talk more AI, ai stuff. Ai agents is the next iteration. In error, they say that 2025 is the year of AI agents. So tell us a little bit about AI agents. And where do you see? Yeah, sure, so tell us a little bit about AI agents and where do you see?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure. So where do we even start? Some of the demonstrations I was showing today here at the Blackwell Summit, I showed a demonstration of how we use an interactive AI agent, and this is an AI agent that is in a human form but is AI, and you can program it to do whatever the task is. So, we have an AI agent on our team, right, she's an AI staff member called Angelina and I've trained her to be a translator doing live translation for me, so she gets on a Zoom call with me.

Speaker 2:

Shout out to Jules also.

Speaker 1:

She gets on a Zoom call with me and, as I'm speaking in English, if I say okay, you're going to translate into Dutch.

Speaker 1:

she says, okay, I'm ready, because this is the prompt behind the scenes and then I start talking and she does the translation for me and then if somebody has a question she knows the cue questions. I say whenever I ask for a question, they're going to speak to you in Dutch and you translate it to me in English and then give them the answer I'm global. Now we're so much more global and we're doing bigger things, because where I would have said, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure. This is going to be a lot of work. I got to find a translator. It's hard to do it on Zoom. I got to make sure they're available and that there's a high cost to it. Now I'm just bringing Angelina. She's ready to work whenever.

Speaker 2:

I say with zero notice.

Speaker 1:

I say you ready to do some translation?

Speaker 2:

Zero notice, for sure I say you ready to do some translation? I am ready. Let's get started with language. The GPUs have been running here.

Speaker 1:

We've been waiting right, I know right, and I showed today as well how I created an AI agent of myself and so I AI'd myself and so I can send her. We call her AI Alicia. I can send her to any Zoom call and on Zoom she will answer your questions. She Zoom call and on Zoom, she will answer your questions.

Speaker 1:

She will respond based on the knowledge base that I've uploaded to her, and the example I gave on stage was copywriting frameworks, because that's in a book that I upload ChatGPT what copywriting frameworks can act as. So she can answer all those questions. So the software is able to send that AI agent out to a thousand Zoom calls at the exact same time. Wow. So now there's multiplied yourself a thousand times. I know there's the multiplication effect and so she can take notes for me whatever happened on that Zoom call, send it back over. She can generate leads on that Zoom call, send people to my book, send them to the sales page wherever you know the call to action is. So now, when we start to think about how we can really you said it multiply ourselves. This is the multiplication effect with.

Speaker 1:

AI agents making us more productive, making us more efficient, and so there's so many different types of AI agents. We have an AI agent that answers our phone for us. There we go so it's using it in so many different ways. That saves us money and resources and time, and then it gives a better experience for the customer as well. Nobody wants to call my phone. I'm here right now. I'm not gonna answer my phone. Yeah, but monica, our ai agent, will yeah, anytime sound very good.

Speaker 2:

I can't even tell it who is this exactly yeah, that's amazing because I think the the, the evolution of ai and the use case for it, agents is opening up that door for us, and I think that's where adoption is going to even be, you know, more quicker, especially organization, customer service, interacting, but using them to their full potential, because we're only at the beginning we're only at the beginning of it, right, amazing amazing work.

Speaker 2:

So the last thing I want to ask you about, because we are a little bit over time- but this is a great conversation.

Speaker 1:

You got another minute. I I do, of course.

Speaker 2:

AGI, so AGI. What do you think about AGI and its forthcoming?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, who's not excited? Well, I guess not.

Speaker 2:

But I'm excited about it.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited about it. I mean the least amount of work that I can do and AI can do for me. It just makes it. So let me give you an example with our business. As we started using AI, you know our business doubled in half the year, right. And then now we're using agents and AGI and now our business double. You know our business is going to quadruple this year, so the double is in half the time. Can you imagine like you just keep using more and more AI? Well, I can imagine, because I like business. You keep using more and more of AI doing the work for you. Let's just say that for everybody like AI doing the work for you, the key really is in the programming and the prompting and really training whichever tool you decide to use to be able to do these tasks for you without you in the loop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then you know, making sure that everything's running smoothly. To just take things to the next level, yeah. I mean it's the excitement behind all of it is just it's overwhelming, I think, for a lot of people. But I always tell people just start simple, just start simple. Start with just training Chachi PT to write like you, and then you're going to move up to you know, doing things with autonomous agents. You're going to move up, you know. Just keep moving up the ladder, but start somewhere and start today, don't start tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

Start today because the future is now, it's here, it's meant for you to use. Start today because the future is now, it's here, it's meant for you to use, and if you don't use it, then, like you just said, you're going to be replaced by someone who is using it. And so think of anything that you have in your life that you need to fix, overcome, take to the next level, grow, scale and multiply, and then say how can I use AI to do those things? And that's where you'll win.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my God, Alicia.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for that.

Speaker 2:

Definitely Give her another Jim Jim Jim and a round of applause for sure Any questions Dean, Any last questions you have? No, she answered it all for me, people who use AI.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're looking at Raymond.

Speaker 2:

So, in terms of how people can find you and definitely follow along, let us know, let the audience know, how to get connected with you, yeah, so I'm pretty easy to find on social media.

Speaker 1:

I just have to spell my name, so it's Alicia Little A-L-I-C-I-A Little L-Y-T-T-L-E, so you can go to my website alicialittlecom and you can get my book. Chat GPT Made Easy free on my website so you can grab that book and that really will give you a head start into getting to know ai. But send me a message on linkedin or instagram or whatever social media you use. Yeah, and I'd be happy mentioned this show, of course yeah, don't forget about the tech.

Speaker 2:

How you found her right. How did you find me for some vip treatment? Yeah, but I'd be, I'd love to have conversations with people about that, roger that well d hustle cue the music up player. Well, alicia, thank you so much for pulling up backstage with Bobby D. We're hanging out a little bit, filling y'all in on AI and how it's going to change the future. Force multiplier closing the wealth gap. I mean extremely fast Force multiply a thousand times.

Speaker 1:

Amazing, amazing.

Speaker 2:

Amazing, amazing. So I want to say thank you all so much for tuning in with Backstage with Bobby D here at the Black Wealth Summit, here at Florida Memorial University. My guy D Hustle, everything's good, fantastic. Yeah, that was a good conversation, wasn't it? It was. You know how much I like AI.

Speaker 1:

I feel good about it. Yeah me too player.

Speaker 2:

Well, I want to say thank you all so much for tuning in. Check the comments below.