Adam Torres and Tal Navarro discuss AI and marketing.
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Show Notes:
AI is revolutionizing the marketplace. In this episode, Adam Torres and Tal Navarro, Philanthropist, Founder & CEO at Social Lady Marketing and AI VIBES, explore personal branding and how AI is changing the world.
About Tal Navarro
Introducing Tal Navarro, a perpetual dreamer and unyieldingly positive individual.
With years of online experience under her belt, Tal is eager to share her expertise, guiding others in navigating the digital landscape.
Her journey? Remarkable. From starting work at 6 to opening her first NYC company at 21, despite its failure, it was a pivotal learning experience.
Venturing to Anguilla, Tal discovered her knack for kitesurfing and the potential of online business. Armed with just her laptop, she launched a successful blog and e-commerce store, mastering everything from coding to promotion on platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace.
About Social Lady Marketing
Social Lady was born in 2016. It was Tal’s time to follow the ultimate American dream and put all her experience in the various aspects of digital marketing into her own business.
Since its beginnings, Social Lady has grown into an international agency with more than a dozen employees across the globe. A team of digital experts works with her to create content, manage brands and channels, and run campaigns for various businesses, brands, artists, and celebrities.
Throughout the process, the company hasn’t lost its unique DNA. They’re all digital and AI lovers who are fueled by a passion for the digital world and the artificial intelligence space.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Tal Navarro, and she’s a philanthropist and also a founder and CEO over at Social Lady Marketing and AI Vibes.
Tal, welcome to the show. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, Tal. So we got a lot to talk about today. with your marketing background, with your background as an influencer and otherwise, and also now what’s going on with AI and your company AI Vibes. I mean, we got a lot to cover here and I guess just to get us kicked off we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all.
With what we like to call our Mission Matters Minute. So, Tal, at Mission Matters, our goal and our aim is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs and executives and experts. So, that’s what we do. Tal, what mission matters to you? Well, my mission in this lifetime, since I remember myself is empowering women, girls and women through business, through arts, through so many, avenues that I’ve been building with the years.
I’ve created nonprofit that supports girls and women through art. I’m collecting women’s art in places they are not able to finance themselves and I’m selling it for them on a marketplace I’ve built. And for me, Educating and giving women and girls the tools to enable support themselves and be independent financially and mentally.
This is my mission in life since since always have been in the male dominated areas and I feel like very, very empowered to. Strengths other women who has been through their own journeys and not always figuring out what they want to do and how and I’m here for them, but I’m here also for any entrepreneur and even being who wants to learn and and and grow and understand.
And I have a long journey that I’ve been through myself and a lot of things that I have accomplished. So I’m super happy to bring them on to to the next. People after me. That’s my that’s my amazing. It’s great. Love people that are focused on paying it forward as well And I guess just to get us kicked off kind of on the business side of things and otherwise So we met correct me if i’m wrong the new port beach investor conference, right?
That’s where I think we were, I was like, wait a minute after I got to see, I swear we’ve met before prior. I still swear that I forget to ask Chirag. I still have to, Chirag’s the other co founder. I forget to ask him. I’m like, we, I know, I know you, but I, so let’s just assume that I’m wrong and that that’s the first time we met.
And I, I was looking at your background further when I was kind of doing my research on this. And your background in, in marketing, like, like when did all that begin for you? That concept or that idea of like, when did you know you wanted to be in marketing and like helping business owners? Well, it all started 20 years ago, literally in 2004 when MySpace was around and I lived far away from my, my family and I was looking for ways to communicate with them and you know, the, the social media platforms just Arrived.
It just started. Mm-Hmm. . There was nothing there. Facebook was just a phase that we thought was gonna go away, but it, was right at the beginning. And so for me, I started with exploring this world and the first. Ever. Well, the first ever company I had was in 2001 was the planning and constructions when I did marketing without even knowing that I’m doing marketing because I did, a logo and handed people flyers on the streets and all the things that marketing needs to be done without internet at the time, without the social media.
But then in 2006, I established my second company, which was my first online company called TPK, which is Tropical Paradise Kitesurfing, and I build a kitesurfing equipment dealership company. I lived in a Caribbean island at the time. And I literally learned everything by myself. I understood that I love, I’m passionate about kite surfing.
I love to kite. I love, I love the, the, the energy, the drive. And I, I decided I don’t want to do business from it because entrepreneurial spirit, that’s the way you are. You want to make business from everything. And so I decided I’m focusing on this, but I living on the island. I understood that I have to get to a broader.
Audience. I can’t sell to those few people who lived on tiny islands. I lived in Anguilla, like barely people over there. And so I started to explore ways to go broader, to more mass, to more people. And I went online and I started to learn by myself, auto deduct coding and graphic design and CSS all those things and marketing.
And I built a website with more than a thousand pages. So became one of the top kitesurfing equipment dealerships. Ever at the time, it’s like years ago from only building by myself, I did e commerce before there was any weeks for WordPress or Shopify. It was not exist at the time. And I started to also understand that storytelling, it’s what drives people around.
And I started to share my Journey on this website, and I also collected people’s stories and everyone came to the website to see other people’s stories from all over the world, kitesurfing on different places. And I was known, I had a partner at the time, and we were both known as the couple from the Caribbean who have this, you know, this company and, and, and traveling the world and sharing stories about kitesurfing.
And in the meantime, I did affiliation with. kitesurfing brands and with audience. I didn’t even have inventory. We were just an affiliation, but it was amazing. It was just, you know, it was just you were an original influencer really before we even using that term. Exactly. No, if you think about it, you were 1 of the original travel influencers without even knowing it.
It’s true, you know, YouTube just started them and Twitter just started them. Facebook was nothing even at the time and there was no Instagram. There was no anything else. mean, there were really little, platform, just a few. And I was focused on a few of them and I grew my audience and my, and the people around my communities through them.
Now imagine, you know, today. I have big communities, and some of them are people who know me girl, as the kite surfer from the Caribbean, which is 20 years ago. they’ve been following me with all my journey, you know, I had since I moved. Back to Israel, I established the first college in Israel for social media in 2011, and it was huge and explode.
I became known in Israel and then I sold it. All the country was like a lot of people and could be companies in my country used to study at my school when no one even knew what is Facebook. It was just the beginning. And I, I brought that there kind of, and then. When I sold it, I decided that I want to get broader and I started to be speaker and investor and until I moved to LA and I established social lady, which is my digital marketing agency.
But these are all stages that some people know me as the kitesurfer girl from the Caribbean until today, when I’m married to someone else and not that guy from the Caribbean, it was a different guy and then, you know, I have babies and I have Mike. My company and AI vibes, and I was on web three at some point for, you know, very, very much debt in depth into the web three world and blockchain and digital marketing for many years.
So, always in the innovation and technology phase, but always evolving and my journey always included self deducted things. I was always learning. As I was going, and I changed with technology, you know, the world is changing, technology is changing, the platform’s changing, and I am changing. That’s the beauty of life.
That is beautiful. And I one of the things, I’m glad you brought that up because I’m glad you brought up the idea that some people still know you from 20 years ago. Because I, I talk quite a bit about personal brand, personal branding, even before, like, once upon a time, your personal brand, like, it only mattered to you.
For like celebrities or athletes or things like that. And now with the advent of social media and this kind of stuff where people can follow you, you know, you have people that have been following you for 20 years, whether you thought they would have been or not been, and you’ve had different changes in your life and they have too, and they’re still following you for your new projects and new things that you’re launching and kind of, they’re trusting you for what’s next, really.
Like when you talked about web three, when you talk about AI now, like. how important was, do you feel your personal brand was kind of along the way in like maintaining those relationships, personal branding is everything for me, at least. And for a lot of people, you know, some people building companies and they’re not showing their face in the front and that’s fine as well, that’s a different approach, but I think personal branding on 2024, it’s one of the most important things that, that you can do.
Every human being should have if not everyone has to have, but if you want to promote anything, or if you want to. Grow and, you know, the world is changing. You never know what tomorrow is going to bring. And if you don’t build yourself and your community and your presence today, then you don’t know where you’re going to be tomorrow.
And I’ve been very consistent on giving, you know, free value. I’m creating content for years. I have literally for ten, I think, fifteen years now, I’m doing newsletters every day. few times a month, we have a blog and a newsletter and every social platform on there on audio platforms and, and visual platforms and just texting.
And if it’s LinkedIn, if it’s Instagram, it was clubhouse. Now we have this air chat cam and so many things, you know, so it’s all about consistency and it’s about being authentic. I’m just being me. So I think that’s the most important when you’re building your self branding. And just be yourself and real value.
I think that’s the most crucial thing that you have to do and do something that you love. Some people, you know, stay in the same thing because their audience love it. No, I changed with the years and my audience kept following me, kept coming with me because they knew me. It doesn’t matter what I’m showing out as long as it’s relevant.
I’m not suddenly selling jewelry. But but I’m changing with the world and I am. Bringing a real value all the time, and I’m always being me. I’m not working too hard to just bring this value. I enjoy doing that. And the audience enjoy receiving that. So I guess that’s important. and I mean, I’ll tell my bias, like the people that are not putting words into your mouth, but this is my bias.
The people that, you know, the once upon a time individuals that, you know, just wanted to be the face behind the company and just behind the scenes and private and this, that, and the other, I mean, I think you still nowadays need to have that personal brand. And the reason I say this is because.
What happens when you exit that company and now you may want to do something else you may have not have Exited for the quantity of money that you wanted that you’re going to be using to raise your next round or your next idea or your next thing that you want to do and that you know that That success in order in my opinion in order to really Capitalize on that success.
Like there has to be something out there from you. I’m not saying you have to be this influencer, you have to have all these channels and this and that, but you got to at least be able to be found on Google, like, you have to be able to have something out there or else what makes you well, a VC is looking at two people for the same amount of money for the same, this and that somebody has a great personal brand.
And let’s just say all things being evil, which they never are, by the way. I’m not, I’m not. saying they are. I’m just giving an example. Then who, who, who do you choose? I mean, who does the VC choose? Do they choose like, just kind of natural knowledge? But that’s why I mentioned that not everyone has to because some people are sure they make exits and they go.
That’s it. I want to be with the family. totally agree with you as well. If you are planning to grow, if you’re planning to create more things in future. You better start now, you better start building your community and even just to put yourself out there on LinkedIn or somewhere where you can be found.
That’s what I said. I said something. I didn’t say right. Right. No, but I’m just saying not. Everyone has to. It doesn’t fit. Maybe everyone, but most people, most of us. We’re not going to be, not all of us are going to be multi billionaires one day and don’t want to be seen outside. So if you do want to grow and continue your legacy, you should definitely start building your branding.
For sure. I want to jump around a little bit here. So you’ve obviously, I mean, from MySpace to AI, that’s not going to be the title of this, but it could be of this episode. So now AI, AI Vibes, now you’re in the middle of the AI you know, wave, like, like, talk to me, like, what, what do you see and why is this so interesting to you?
Well, I’ll tell you what, it’s for me, you know, it’s fascinating to observe how. The artificial intelligence is been integrating into fabric of so many industries and it’s fundamental for transforming them. And I think that the way that the world is changing, it’s fascinating me as well. So it started with, you know, my space, like you said, and I saw how it grew.
How the social media platforms evolved and then came the audio apps and then came, you know, the, the, the crypto world. started with crypto in 2016. I had my 1st coin and then all this NFT boom exploded a few months a few years after so all the changes the world is changing and evolving. And obviously, I, we’ve been here for so long, but now it’s in the hands of human beings who can play with it and do things every 1 of us.
Which is incredible and scary at the same time. I think it’s super, super interesting. Also on the aspect of the marketing, you know, it’s because AI is not just transforming marketing, but it’s fundamentally reshaping the way brands are connecting with consumers. And it’s offering unique personalization and efficiency.
You know, we spoke about personalization and now it’s easier to do it with AI. It’s going to be easier if someone doesn’t want to be in front of the camera. Yeah. Now he can be, and if someone doesn’t want to have his voice, or has no time to be in everywhere, he can have an agent or an avatar who can be everywhere for him.
So, the more we go with the years, the more the world changes. It’s been evolving and the easier it’s for us to brand to build to create to, you know, if anyone wants to build his own business now, it’s now this time, it’s easier than ever or his own personal branding. These things are unchangeable and are they are on reversible.
We’re going to a very special place. And I hope we all know how to treat it and take the best from it. Yeah, yeah, I agree with this. And I think what’s what’s interesting is that those that choose to be, you know, early adopters, and I don’t even know if we can even call it early adopters anymore, just adopters period.
I think everything’s moving so fast. At this point that like, you know, I’ll give you one quick example. So I was you know, on, we, we do a lot of publishing on Amazon. So the other day we I got this email, maybe this is about a month ago or something like that. And this email had they’re doing now where you can.
Make your audio book on Amazon through their Kindle backend publishing, whatever like using an AI voice and it just took a couple of clicks. Now, I had been thinking about like our catalog. I mean, we’ve published, you know, over 400 authors, a bunch of books. We got a lot, a ton of books on, on Amazon.
And I’ve been thinking about. You know, making those available. And I’ve been costing that out. And we, and by the way, we do this internally because we record audio for the podcast and everything else. So it was more so like the internal planning or resources. and then, you know, I give that an a whirl and I’m telling you to within seven minutes, that, that book that I was experimenting.
It’s, it’s as good as it needs to be. Like it’s great like the AI voice everything else and and guess what the cost was zero dollars Right. So now what I did is I had our senior editor go through and start updating all of our catalog for audiobooks and guess what? I didn’t have to record them I didn’t have to spend time.
I didn’t have to spend resources And now you know it’s bringing a whole nother wave of things to use So whether or not and we’re pro ai over here. I mean, we’re we just Find so many great uses for it. But that being said, including one day, I want to AI, Adam Powell, and then you’ll be talking to him.
Maybe I don’t know somebody, Adam interviewing Adam. That’s going to be the show, whatever. That’s it. That does not sound like a good show to me, but anyway, but look at that. Updated that quick and that, that quick, like with one email, part of our business model changed and we’re no longer really even marketing or like right after I did that, I’m like, Oh, We’re not going to tell people we do audio books anymore.
There’s no point in investing any marketing dollars on that. That’s done. You know, AI, AI is changing. It’s revolutionizing the content creation. You know, it’s, it’s going to enable marketers to. Generate more personalized and engaging content and, and creating craft emails and website content and that is visitors can adapted the behavior and create articles and Instagram captions and YouTube script and tick tock ideas or videos.
And so. It just makes everything easier for brands to maintain consistency and compelling narrative across all channels, because has been hard for people to create content consistently, you know, how long, how many years I’ve been, I had a whole team of people creating content for me for years. And now I just, you know, I had to, say goodbye to some of them because need them less.
And AI is just the best, you know, the best tool for me to actually scale up, scale up my game, scale up my content and save costs, save money. And that’s why I’m so drive driven into it, or, you know, passionate about it. And I think that it can change people’s lives. do a lot of webinars and a lot of, you know, free webinars and giving a lot of content around it.
And I write about it. I talk about it. I think it’s life changing and I can say now to everyone who did not even try or is a little bit afraid of AI. Pick a tool. There are thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of tools out there. You don’t need to know all of them. You don’t need to understand everything, but pick a tool or two that related to you that you can.
Work with and and try it on and, you know, experiment with and understand that is not replacing humanity. Not yet. At least. But if you’re taking the algorithm and you mix it, or you combine it with the human skill, you can bring loads of amazing results. I mean, so you’re going to be ahead of your competition.
If you’re going to know. AI or utilize AI in different levels or different tools. You’re going to be completely ahead of your competition on so many ways. So that’s an amazing thing that our times now has brought to us. Love it. Well, Cal, this is beautiful. It’s been so much fun having you on the show finally and getting you for an interview and exploring your, your background and, and you know, what’s made you so successful in this, in this game.
That being said, if somebody is listening to this or watching this and they want to learn more about any of your work, whether it’s social media marketing whether it’s AI vibes or just to, you know, follow your journey, I mean, how do people do that best? Well, on 1st of all, just to let, you know, the social lady, what we do, we do marketing and we build strategy for companies on letting them build their online branding and and also, you know, organizations, startups, entrepreneurs, et cetera.
And on a, I vibe, we create events and conferences and summit. So you get all the information in our website. We also work with AI startups to connect them with celebrities and influencers and thought leaders and sports teams. I have amazing team on board on both companies. So social lady will be social dash lady.
com if anyone interested. And of course, AI vibes. ai that’s our website. And also you can find me on anywhere you want, Instagram, Alvaro. LinkedIn, Tal Navarro. That’s what I call a personal brand, yes. Right, right. We have been, the newsletters and so many others. We got, you know, WhatsApp group, we got just name it.
Any platform, just write my name with double R, T A L, and then Navarro with double R. I’ll see you there. You know, and just DM me. I’m super connected, connected with my audience and you know, trying to reach out to everyone or my team does. And yeah, I’m super happy to connect and get to know more people.
Amazing. And for everybody listening to this, just so you know, we’ll put the links to what Tal mentioned, the websites in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, this is a daily show. Each and every day, we’re putting out new content, new episodes and we’re bringing to you new founders, new executives, new ideas.
If that sounds great to you, hit the like button. That subscribe button because we have many more mission-based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Again, hit that subscribe button. And tal, thank you again so much for coming on. You are welcome. Thank you for having me.
And I hope everyone will click your links and listen to all your episodes ’cause they’re really good. I’m enjoying them. So thank you for having me.