How Tiyon Simpson Helps Entrepreneurs Find the How After the Why

Tiyon [00:00:00] what we do is we help them craft, the how after the why. So we help them to understand what it is that they're trying to achieve, what problems they're trying to solve, how they want to be known in the marketplace, audience, all that kind of stuff.

Hector Hello and welcome to another episode of the How to Scale a Business Podcast. My name is Hector Santi Esteban, and I am your host. Our special guest is Mr. Ion Thompson, and he is someone who is here to talk to us about branding, about ai, about everything in between. So ion welcome and thanks for spending some time with us today.

Tiyon Hector, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Hector Give us a couple of, key stops. give us a little bit about, sort of your background and your history and some of the key stops along the way. And then, a little bit about what you're doing with your clients today.

Tiyon Yeah, no problem at all.

Tiyon So, as you can probably tell, I'm originally from the uk. Born and raised in London. before I made the jump into entrepreneurship, I spent almost 10 years working in corporate financial services. I worked for some of the biggest, wealth managers and financial, planners in the city. [00:01:00] Did what most people do.

Tiyon Can I get tired of the corporate lifestyle and make the jump into entrepreneurship? So that's exactly what we did. Myself, my wife and my, youngest daughter, we ended up moving to her place, her country of origin, which is Bulgaria. So we now live in Bulgaria, but it enabled us to become entrepreneurs and do what we do now.

Tiyon We made that jump. We've started two businesses, one of which is a branding and marketing company, which I share with. My wife, which is called Z Media. And the other one which I run myself, which is TL Simpson Enterprises, it's named after myself, of which I run a consulting firm, which I, of which I help, entrepreneurs, career professionals and other creative, content creators with their personal branding and their brand positioning.

Hector It's, it's an interesting world that we're living in today because, we've talked a lot about AI and the things that's happening. I think that people thought that the creatives space would be safe and they would be, the last for it to come. It seems like they got moved to the front of the line.

Hector Someone wasn't, happy with them. It seems like. what's been your [00:02:00] experience and how that has,evolved And then what are, I guess we can start with, are there any sort of mistakes that businesses are making when it comes to sort of rebranding in a post AI sort of world?

Tiyon Yeah, so two things basically stand out from my experience so far.

Tiyon I think maybe the first thing where. Maybe we are. what I've found certainly with, with some of the clients that we've been working with, the people we've been speaking to so far with our businesses, is that we're finding that a lot of clients are, maybe overusing AI to a point where the, it's kind of taking away the actual either, some kind of creative engagement that they would with, normally with, when it comes to creating a brand strategy, if they're doing it themselves.

Tiyon They're essentially kind of overusing ai. They're not really kind of breaking everything down as every kind of aspect of their business and using AI strategically in order to accelerate or scale what they're doing in a way that will really enhance what they're doing. But [00:03:00] what we're finding is that they, many businesses are using AI to a point now where it's almost like they're becoming clones of one, one another.

Tiyon there's almost like a, A temptation or in some cases an actuality of a kind of like a lazy type approach of, Of using ai. So what we are finding is that many, many clients are kind of using similar kinds of strategies. We're noticing that, some of the same kind of buzzwords that come up.

Tiyon If if you use AI quite frequently, like clarity, for example. I know I'm in the positioning space, but sometimes positioning comes up quite often as well. And where, there's a, I would probably say a lack of understanding or maybe a way to go in terms of education in this area still feel like, especially where it's.

Tiyon with some older businesses that, there's still quite a long way to go, where there's a lot of education that's really needed in this space. And that's kind of where I've kind of, I personally have seen, we've both seen a, got a gap in the market and, we're kind of stepping in one on an educational level, but two, using AI in a more strategic, basis in order to really help scale [00:04:00] rather than to kind of.

Tiyon Help businesses become clones of one another, essentially. So, yeah, so a lot of work, but so far so good. I think ai, from my own perspective, has been a positive step in terms of helping businesses to scale quicker. but I think, as I've said, with bringing in the, the educational part of it, I think it will really, help many businesses in the long term going forward.

Hector Yeah. It seems like, A year or two ago, you could type a prompt in and it would give you a business plan and it would spit something out and it might look good,and that's all great, but to your point, it might not, be totally aligned, authentic, or even correct. you can get sort of these things.

Hector And today, now you can do sort of the same with a logo or even a video or an AI avatar. I mean, the, it's very possible to create these things, but it doesn't remove. To your point, you mentioned the creative aspect or the human or the authentic, or even the relatability part. it makes it much more accessible, but,the fundamentals are still the [00:05:00] fundamentals and so that really hasn't gone away.

Hector the other thing that you sort of mentioned is that the playing field has sort of been leveled a little bit in terms of that accessibility and so. I don't know that the expectations have necessarily caught up there in terms of the market, but now everybody has a competent designer in their sort of back pocket, and that can be great for, some people.

Hector And I would imagine that also creates some challenges, for some businesses as well.

Tiyon Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'd have to definitely agree with that. So I, if I could give one example, one of our clients, that we have here in Bulgaria, well say it's a former client now, but either way I use them as a case study.

Tiyon So, they are in the food business and, we were tasked as one of the first clients we ever had, was to basically, essentially give them a rebranding from scratch. so, fresh logos, fresh, we did the shop fronts for them as well. Leaflets, designs, logos, the whole shebang, right? We ended up, if we worked with them for almost a year, we did, give ourselves little pat [00:06:00] on the back here.

Tiyon We did a pretty good job of, getting them to a pretty decent level in terms of social media. We did fairly well with their content as well. But basically the reason why we've used them as an example is because, we're, as I've mentioned before. Let's call it, let's call it what it is, the laziness sometimes where you just kind of stick a prompt into chat, GPT or any ai, any AI software that you want to use.

Tiyon Right? We were finding that, where some people or maybe some businesses weren't wanting to either take the effort to really learn how the business works. They were just basically kind of taking our existing ideas, which we'd created. Yes. to an extent we'd used ai, but, but it wasn't obviously fully, AI generated.

Tiyon My wife is a, is a graphic designer and, she takes care of vis, the, what's the words, the, visual aspects of the branding side of our business. So they essentially took what we'd created, stuck it in an ai, in an ai, platform, and kind of created like a crude copy of kind of what we'd done and more or less kind of tried to [00:07:00] pass it off as their own, maybe to the untrained dial, maybe, those are maybe not so familiar with that.

Tiyon it may look okay. But, for, from our perspective where we're kind of seeing our work kind of ripped off in a way. it's almost like, you've said it as well, Hector, like the. Disingenuousness or the inauthenticity of, you know how, see, if you're trying to build a brand, but you're not really building a brand when you're kind of one, you're kind of basically cheating, using AI to grip of someone else's work.

Tiyon And two, if you are gonna try and piggyback,an existing brand which is kind of doing well, then you know, the likelihood that your brand will basically last in the long term is probably gonna be next to nil. So. I think we, if we kind of bring it home here, in terms of, challenges that,that people are facing particularly in, in this area.

Tiyon I think one of the ways to kind of resolve things that, that happen here is there is an element of obviously educating yourself. there's so much resource that's available. many of us Yeah, you're right. we are on a very similar. Playing field. Now there is, [00:08:00] you could say the bar has been lowered.

Tiyon The competition is maybe not as. great in terms of, competing with say, bigger branding or bigger marketing firms and bigger budgets, for example. I mean, the gap has closed a bit, but there is still work to do. no one, even if you don't know anything about this industry, no one will work with basically an inferior product.

Tiyon And yes, AI is beneficial and it helps many people a lot. But you know, the general public or Business owners or business, businesses in general, most entrepreneurs aren't stupid people. So they'll know when something is authentic or when something you know, has been created with a, with either some level of craft or some level of care, rather than just an over, over reliance on either getting something done quickly or something that really isn't authentic.

Tiyon So I think just to kind of touch on authenticity, that part is something that I think, maybe a lot of people are waking up to at moments and thinking, yeah, we need a business that really Speaks to our customers.

Hector Yeah. I think a lot of people are sort of waking up to the fact that just because AI can do it doesn't mean that it's gonna be any good.

Hector there's still that [00:09:00] whole part of it, and I see some of these really amazing things that people are saying, we're not saying just saying that they can do with ai, but they are getting it done with ai. But underneath that, there's still the skillset that they had to develop and the experience that they had to develop, and they're now able to sort of embed that skillset and experience into ai.

Hector But it's still, at least initially right now, it requires that skillset of, like you said, being a designer or having the taste or whatever it is, because just, I liken it to like a crane. if you give a crane to a general con contractor, there's likelihood of that being a building. If you give it to me, it's gonna be chaos and destruction.

Hector There's nothing's gonna come of it. That's good. And so, similarly, it's really about, giving people a tool that, previously was not,available to them. when it comes to sort of, when you look at like what a brand means, moving forward, right?

Hector I think that a lot of people [00:10:00] used to think a brand was a logo or it was a name, or it was a domain or, they would sort of. not minimize it or diminish it, but they would sort of put it in, into this box of here's what a, your brand is this. When you guys think about what a brand is, as we head into sort of this.

Hector I don't know, just post AI world. How do you answer that question?

Tiyon Oh, brand is such a big buzzword now. I mean, look on social media, look at what the big, many of the big,many of the big creators in this space right now, many people are talking about brand. Build your brand, build your personal brand, make sure you have a strong, powerful brand.

Tiyon in, in my experience and certainly from what we are, what I'm encountering at the moment, I still don't think that many people, or even many entrepreneurs to an extent really understand what a brand actually is. So, in order to kind of, kind of break that down a little bit in terms of, the p the clients that I'm working with and what we're kind of seeing at the moment, if I had to kind of put it in a sentence, what is a brand?

Tiyon A brand is essentially [00:11:00] what is said or what is known about you when you are not there. Your reputation for when you or your business is not present. I had a conversation with a, with a designer friend of mine fairly recently, and, we were talking about how brands have power and how, if you go back to what you said just a moment ago about, about a logo, It's a decent place to start in thinking that, let's just take Nike for example, where everybody knows Nike is just a tick, right? But obviously it's a distinctive tick, but everyone can see that distinctive tick and know. Not just that it's Nike, but what the Nike brand actually stands for. I obviously won't go into too much detail, but you know that you are not just looking at a tick, you are looking at something that goes beyond just a tick.

Tiyon And what we do, I know we haven't got that much, I haven't got that much time, so I'm not gonna go through, our whole kind of step by step process of how we build brands. But essentially the first thing that we do in terms of. if we're dealing with a solo entrepreneur, dealing with a natural, small business, is [00:12:00] we need to understand the who and the why behind what they're doing.

Tiyon That is the first and the most fundamental question to ask whenever you are kind of either rebranding or building a brand from scratch. And if they can't answer that question, especially the why question. If they don't know why they exist or why they do what they do, then they don't have a brand. They haven't even got a business, right?

Tiyon If they can at least ask a ask, answer the why. They're a bit unsure about the how we can fix the how, but until they have the why, they have no brand at all. So to kind of break it down, what we do is we help them craft, the how after the why. So we help them to understand what it is that they're trying to achieve, what problems they're trying to solve, how they want to be known in the marketplace, audience, all that kind of stuff.

Tiyon Kind of general, I'd say general branding and marketing type. Processes. I said, as I said, I'm not gonna go through the whole thing, but one thing I will kind of add to that, and part of what I do as well with my own business, TL Simpson Enterprises, is [00:13:00] that I work with individuals on a, on a personal branding basis.

Tiyon So we kind of look beyond the service or look beyond the career or look beyond what it is that they want to achieve, but we kind of do more of a deep dive within the person. One very quick example is that, one former client of mine admitted once she'd gone through a program with me was that everything that I've kind of explained in terms of understanding her story, her target audience, what she wants, how to tell her story, content strategies, all that kind of thing.

Tiyon She basically said to me, I kind of knew everything, but what you did is that you kind of helped me kind of. Put the pins together. It's like I was able to like draw the dots together and now I'm just left with a picture and now I understand what my brand is. And to that point is I'm hoping that not just with this particular client but with all clients, is that they can basically take what we create together in terms of understanding their positioning, how to build their brand, and be able to take that [00:14:00] now into the marketplace with a clearer understanding of who they are and what kind of reputation they want to build.

Hector my sort of, Thesis on brands is, I grew up in the nineties, two thousands, sort of prototypical millennial, and it was like, that's the logo was your brand. Nike made their mark there and then it sort of became about. as it morphed, it evolved into what was your web presence?

Hector that was the brand. And then social media came along and it was like, what was your social community? I think interestingly enough, we're sort of coming back full circle and it's like, well, what is it actually about with people? Like when you interact with people and whether that community.

Hector Is whether it's online or in person. Like that's, when I think about a brand, you said it's when you're not there talking about it, it's like, what are those other people saying? what's the community saying? And it seems like the, it's gonna be interesting and no one's, no. At least I don't, there's no way to know if I'm even right.

Hector I don't even believe that I'm right, but my [00:15:00] hypothesis is that this whole AI thing is just gonna force people back into, connection. You know that we're gonna go, we took this long route of the internet and social media and, interacting through comments and profiles, all the way to realize that, that people just need, people again.

Hector And, I think, AI will enable and allow that, If we so choose, if, and I think it will be up to us to do that.

Tiyon Can I just jump in just a second? Sorry to interrupt. Can I just jump in for just a second? I've just got two, very quick points I wanna make on just literally what you just said.

Tiyon That's. First thing is that there is a genuine appetite for authenticity. I don't think, and certainly other people I know, other entrepreneurs, other creators that I know, we know that audience are looking for real, for not just real brands, but real people, real content, real connections. Because let's take a platform like LinkedIn for example.

Tiyon We, you won't go too far if you're scrolling through your main feed. [00:16:00] Without spotting either a post that's been generated entirely by AI or comments that are generated by ai. Got a quick, we've got a very, very quick story to tell you before I get onto my second point, but I wrote an article recently about the impact of culture when you're building a brand.

Tiyon That's not something I wanted to talk about today, but it's on my LinkedIn. If you're interested, if anyone's interested, please go and read it. and I specifically wrote an argument for, In my case, the support that I would get as an entrepreneur from the black community versus whether as a black entrepreneur, I'm creating for everybody.

Tiyon So from a global perspective, or specifically for the black community, and I kind of went into a bit of a thesis about that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I got a comment or a couple of comments on, on this article and one of the, sorry, one of the comments was clearly AI generated and it basically said, as a black entrepreneur, I agree with you,yada.

Tiyon And then if you looked at the picture, the person commenting, it's a middle class white woman from somewhere down. America. I kid. I kid you not. [00:17:00] No, no joke. and I just sat there laughing that whoever that was, I was clearly a scammer of some kind. Clearly just obviously took my article, ran it through ai and just basically told ai, just AI respond to this guy's comment and make it seem like I'm interested.

Tiyon But then for me, obviously I'm the creator. I've read this thinking, this is obviously not genuine because you've just got AI to do it. Forget the fact that you're a scammer. I don't care. You know who you are, where you're from. The fact that you've used AI in a disingenuous way makes me kind of hate the fact that so many people now in order to kind of try and grow their brands or grow their presences, whatever, on whatever platform, forget limited whatever platform quicker.

Tiyon It's just lazy, it's inauthentic, and people are crying out for real stories, real experiences, real brands, and you absolutely spot on to the point where everybody or many people just wanna go back to what's real, which is most important.

Tiyon Second point, very quickly was about connections. What I've basically found, through my three or four years now of being an entrepreneur, that the [00:18:00] power of connections now, especially in an AI driven world, has become more important, probably now more than ever. It's for the same reasons, because, without other people we can't get stuff done.

Tiyon This is something I'm finding out really, To an extent as an entrepreneur in my days of corporate, if I was invited to a networking event, I would probably cringe, drink free wine and go home, because I, last thing I wanted to do was talk to colleagues who would never talk to me in the first place about a subject I probably didn't really care about.

Tiyon I was only there for the money. I'd wanted to go home. However, on in a, just fast forward five or 10 years, we're now in a point where, in a place now where there's so much reliance, especially online of just basically ai. Whether it's bots or whether it's people using AI talking to each other, that there's this, just this real need for real interactivity, real business, real connections.

Tiyon It's like things like this, for example, where I'm having a real conversation with you. I'm not using like any AI notes or using AI to kind of say what I want to, say, what I want to say to you, Hector. It's almost like that, that, that. [00:19:00] Interactivity between human beings will only become stronger through this because it's almost like there'll be like a rage against machine type moment where, it's almost like, screw ai.

Tiyon Let's go back to what humans do best, which is collaborate and network as humans rather than just, rather than with machines.

Hector Yeah, it seems like that is the differentiator. I think as humans, we took, , and perhaps it had its time and it was rightfully so, the value and the work that we did, in the, production that we did. But, I don't know that is, is our greatest, you know, gift to the world.

Hector Right. per perhaps. But I think that, and I could be delusional, but I, I believe that it's going to enable people to really, you know, come into their and allow them to be in their highest gifts or to, you know, to provide that, whether that's through art or ideas or ingenuity or like you said, connection and community, to be able to create that.

Hector And so, all this [00:20:00] to say that, you know, I don't know if someone got to the end of this and they, you know, very doom and gloom on the idea of it. similarly, it's just a tool and, uh, you know, how we choose to use it is gonna make a big difference.

Tiyon I think,to kind of put a positive spin, because I don't wanna sound like, someone that's kind of bashing the use of ai, especially in, in this day and age, I wanna kind of give a little bit of praise to, for how AI has basically transformed our business. We not only get.

Tiyon mainly a lot of done quicker, but AI helps us a lot with meetings. It helps us get reports done faster. in terms of, things like, creating logos, images, content strategies, general brand of business strategies, the process in terms of getting all that done is like halve to a third.

Tiyon It frees up time to do more. We can take on more clients. the old saying of what, say the old saying, I've heard it said that AI will create more millionaires than the internet ever did, and I firmly believe that's true because if you have a tool that is, if you are, even if you're using the free [00:21:00] versions of these tools, if you use 'em strategically, you can basically find or use so much resource, free resource that can basically transform your business.

Tiyon And not only get to where you wanna get to quicker, but it's almost like AI can be the best assistant that you've ever had. it could be the best business partner, it could even be the best strategist to use it correctly. and maybe there might be some people who might be a little bit, skeptical still about, I'm not so sure about AI's taken over.

Tiyon There's so much fake stuff for the internet these days. But, AI is so much more than just,Evil mechanism. That's to take everybody's jobs. It's almost like it's not something to be feared. Ai. Something needs to in be. Yes, it, some jobs may, some jobs will and probably will be, will be cost in, in, in this period.

Tiyon But with the capabilities of what we have now, more and [00:22:00] better jobs and more and better opportunities will be created through this. This new era that we've moved into. So yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say that everything that I've kind of, mostly what I've said is, necessarily all bad.

Tiyon But I think once I, you kind of outweigh the benefits of what, how our AI has transformed our business and how we are scaling so much in such a short period of time. the sky is basically the limit. So, yeah, I mean it's exciting. I mean it's something that, We're excited to see more iterations of certain platforms going forward and the capabilities and, and I think the more that, more people will, will kind of embrace this era, we'll see businesses scaling faster, people becoming more successful, and ultimately people being more, if used correctly, smarter and more educated in, in, in this,in this new era, we're into.

Hector Yeah, for sure. Tian, this has been a great conversation. I got two questions left for you. The first is if people wanna get more connected with you, find out about you and what you guys do. Where's the best place for people to go?

Tiyon No problem at all. Best place [00:23:00] to connect with me is LinkedIn. so my name is, Tian l Simpson.

Tiyon I'm sure there'll be details there somewhere, but my name is spelled TIY, Yankee O Oscar n for November. Quite easy to find. Follow my content on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram under the same name. I actually have two podcasts of my own, one of which is called The Life of Someone Extraordinary, where I interview guests from all around the world.

Tiyon We talk entrepreneurship. We talk business, we talk life stories, talk experiences, and you know what we're saying before about the human aspect of connectivity and people's stories and people's journeys. That's one of the podcasts I, I run myself. I also have another podcast called The Creative, where that's kind of more.

Tiyon Framework, especially in, yes, I have, I have a website for my business coming soon. I can't, obviously can't give you that in a moment because it's still being built. Still being built, but if you connect with me on LinkedIn or on Instagram, details will be out there. And if you wanna work with me then please just get in touch and,we can have a chat.

Hector Yeah, we'll link up the, the links there to, your LinkedIn and anything else that, people can do to find you. And my last question, Tian, is, [00:24:00] in your opinion, what is the secret to scaling a business?

Tiyon Excellent, excellent question.

Tiyon There's a few answers for this, in my opinion. but in terms of from my own journey and my own experience of scaling, I'd probably say a combination of graft. In terms of relentlessly working hard, even when it's difficult during the lean periods. And genuine care for your customers, care for your clients.

Tiyon I'll just elaborate on that last part just for a moment before we close. my background before getting into business was in customer service or client service. And, that's something I've excelled in throughout my entire working career. Got me to the point of working, for some really big firms in London and the standard, whether you are serving drinks in a bar, whether you are through to, Multimillionaires, the level of care of what you bring to your clients doesn't [00:25:00] change. And I think if you have genuine care and genuine interests for your clients. That what you get in response, the appreciation, the the trust that's built from, from the level of service, level of excellence that you provide to your, the service that you provide, service you provide to your clients that will be reciprocated in ways that maybe you won't understand immediately.

Tiyon You might just think, oh, well. it doesn't matter. why should I care so much about the customer service or the client service aspect of running a business, but you don't know the impact of, doing good in your business, what that can do for your clients and how that client can repay you.

Tiyon You don't know by. let's just say you do an excellent piece of work for one of your clients. They sit on it for six months, or they pay you, they sit on it, you don't hear for them for six months, and in six months down the line, they've told 10 or 20 people about the good work you've done.

Tiyon And next thing you've got 20 new clients and all you, and that's not really cost you anything. All you've done is you [00:26:00] being client centered. Client focused, thinking about the needs and solving the client's problem. So seeds that will hopefully, eventually, so care about your clients.