FNB App Academy 2026 EP 5

11:40 Heat. Heat. >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, hey.

12:25 [music] You [music] ever [music] heat >> [music]

13:17 >> What's popping everybody? Welcome back to the 2026 FM App Academy. I am Kabo Mu. always excited to be here as we all strive from grassroots to greatness to get us to a perfect place where we are supposed to be. All right, so as you know that this year we're working with the Johannesburg business school at the University of Johannesburg to bring you guys an incredible 10week course. All right, so the first five weeks will focus on digital skills and entrepreneurship and the second five weeks will focus on app development as well as coding. So the last episode Devon took us through an amazing lesson on module one which is digital literacy and productivity tools. So in that episode we covered topic one and two and today we're going to be continuing to cover topic three and four. All right. So without any further ado please let's

14:03 welcome back Devon Padu. Welcome back everyone. Hi, my name is Devon Parvu and we are in the middle of module one, digital literacy and productivity tools. Let's do a quick re a quick recap on what we've covered. In module one, we've discussed the foundations of digital literacy and in particular we've covered at length the triad model. Um we've looked at digital data and AI literacy and how they build upon each other progressively. And then secondly, we've had a bit of an introduction into artificial intelligence. Uh we've discussed some of

14:50 the core concepts, capabilities, and the critical limitations of where these models fall over, where they fail. We've built also built a mental model for using AI critically and confidently to help you build trust and continue to deepen your relationships with your customers to ensure that you can move to a point of monetization. What we're going to be discussing today is how to build a second brain using a system called code and a framework called para p a r a to help you leverage these tools to ensure that you are more productive um in 2026 and beyond. Typically what we

15:38 think about when it comes to productivity tools is that how do we use Excel Word PowerPoint uh Outlook and so forth. Those are elementary tools that we use on a day-to-day basis that are essentially the foundation of you being productive. Um what building a second brain helps us do, it helps us exponentially become more productive. Uh because we've got vast volumes of information being thrown at us on a daily basis. more today than ever before. So, we'll jump into how to build that second brain. And then lastly, uh we're going to be touching touching on a very very important matter of safety, data, and your digital footprint. We're going to be touching on the likes

16:23 of the Poppy or Papaya framework and the legal obligations associated thereof. And then also help you develop an awareness around how algorithmic our lives currently are and how we cannot be held subject to the algorithms of today and instead we once again orchestrate our our our business, orchestrate our lives and use these algorithms to our benefit as opposed to being subject to them. If you're ready, I am. Let's jump in. So, building your second brain, as mentioned before, we've got a more information being thrown at us today than ever before, right? And I'm sure that every single

17:10 one of us have had an idea around what to build, how to go about building it, or what marketing campaign we should be running next, and then in 24 hours, we've forgotten about it, or we've actually completely forgotten about what the core elements of that idea was. The problem is not a system problem. It's a discipline. Sorry. Uh, I got that mixed up completely. It's the other way around. >> Other way around. That's fine. >> I'm sure every single one of us have had an idea around what app we should be building, what feature we should be adding into our our app or onto our website or what what we should be building as a business or a marketing campaign that we believe is going to be

17:58 uh that's going to hold traction in the market or potentially go viral. um and within 24 hours we've forgotten completely what that is or we've forgotten the core elements of what we wanted to build in the first place. This is a systems problem, not a discipline problem. And by building your second brain, I'm going to show you exactly how you can structure your life in order to leverage those ideas as and when you need them without losing them or forgetting them. Because our brains was was never designed to store information. The filing system in our brain physiologically is quite archaic uh because it was designed to generate ideas and generate ideas at length. So

18:45 what are we going to be learning today? Explaining the purpose of and the phil philosophy uh of the second brain and why it matters to us as entrepreneurs. We're going to apply the code method capture, organize, distill, and express to manage our business information. We're going to set up a basic parap framework in notion AI. Um, and that par structure is around projects. What projects are you currently busy with? What areas of those projects are you going to be actively involved in or are actively involved in? What type of resources are going to support the execution of those projects?

19:32 And then archives. And this is not to shelf anything or to delete anything. This is it's just ideas that we're not getting to. It's information that we're just not getting to, but we know it's going to serve us in the future. >> And we're going to be building that in The fourth objective is to practically identify use cases for the likes of notion, Trello from a productivity management point of view and then notebook LM as we've discussed in the previous uh previous time we were together around how do we research information to build a knowledge base that is specific to your entity. And lastly, we're going to recognize the threshold moment, the shift from reactive to intentional knowledge

20:18 management. And that's all built through the systems as opposed to an app that we want to build. It's built through a system of how we think and how we store information so that we can recall that very quickly. So a great idea lost within 24 hours is not a discipline problem. It's a systems problem. Think about this. If you look at your browser at the moment, um, how many tabs do you have open? You might have more than five. You might have more than 10 in some cases. Or how many WhatsApp messages have you never managed to get back to, right? How many have you starred that you you've actually never gotten back to at all? Now how many voice notes or voice memos

21:03 have you created for yourself or have you not just listened to uh that they are just left unchecked? This is not a problem because the systems and technologies are not working for us. We just haven't structured the information so that we are that we create a system for us to go back to. Right? So we could use all the tools in the world yet using those tools won't build a system for us. We have there's some actual navigation that we need to put in place to ensure that we able to leverage these systems effectively. So there's a gentleman by the name of

21:49 Thiago Forte um who's created the system of the second brain. We've got a video that we'll take a watch in a few minutes. And in this video, he's going to show you how exactly you can use an application like notion in order to identify what are those actions that you need to take, what are those reference source materials or resources that you need to store somewhere. Um, and then what what do you need to do immediately and what do you need to what what structure do you need to pull in place to ensure that you don't forget what needs to take place next week, the week thereafter, next month or three months down the line. And it'll help you navigate exactly how you can do that.

22:36 But notion is a great application. If you don't have it just yet, I would implore that you do download it or it's web based so you can create an account on uh the browser on the on your browser uh through the application and when you log in it will notion AI will prompt you based on the role that you currently play in your business founder as an example um to create a structure for you based on the par framework work that structures the projects that you want to uh that you are currently actively building or want to build the uh actions that you need to take the resources that you are using in order to inform those actions

23:23 and then lastly any anything that needs to be archived that you are going to be using in the foreseeable future as opposed to immediately. So Thiago will will take you through that video in a it's a short video. He'll help you understand exactly how to create a living repository of information that you use on a regular basis. Okay. So, let's watch the video and then we'll continue thereafter. One of the biggest challenges of modern life is information overload. from messages, [music] meeting invites, notifications, documents that people are sending us. Plus, the content we like to consume books podcasts YouTube videos, those are all information, too. And sometimes [music]

24:09 you just feel stuck and you don't know why. It's this feeling that you can't find what you're looking for, even though you know you saved it. [music] If you ever have that experience, I'm here to tell you it's not your [music] fault. You're trying to lead a modern 21st century life with a paleolithic not evolve for that. >> You can stay, but I'm leaving. >> Yellow. >> So, we turn to our digital productivity apps to carry some of the load. In this video, I'm talking about my action reference [music] framework. It's a simple way to put every piece of information exactly where it goes. Think about your second brain, which is what I call my digital system for managing information. Think about it in terms of

24:55 two hemispheres. Just as your biological brain processes information differently in the two hemispheres, so does your digital brain. On the left, the more analytical side, [music] we have action. Things you have to do like tasks, to-dos, and [music] meetings. On the right, the more free form creative side, we have reference. things you want to think about, learn, refer to, and possibly incorporate into your work at some point in the future. This distinction between actionable information and reference information originally comes from David Allen's book, Getting Things Done. As information comes into your world, the first decision you'll need to make is a simple yes no question. Is this something I need to [music] do soon or not? For example, let's say a piece of

25:43 information comes in which is file taxes. Is that something that you need to do in the short term or just something that you're keeping for future reference? Clearly something that you need to do. It's an action. So, I'm going to put it on this side. The actions that you need to take in your day-to-day life, you don't want them to get lost in this sea of interesting stuff. They need to be pulled out and put in a separate place where you give them more of your attention. But remember I said there are two decisions you need to make for the action side. The second question is does this action need to be taken at a specific time? Yes or no? Things like meetings, Zoom calls, events you're attending, those can't happen whenever you feel like it. They are highly time-specific like 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. So they should go in the

26:29 perfect app design for that, a calendar app. I personally use Google Calendar, a free service used by millions of people because it's completely reliable and allows me to send and receive meeting invites [music] between myself and others. But you also have the option of using a client calendar app that syncs with the Google calendar servers. Now, if an action doesn't need to happen at a specific time, then it can go in your task manager, which is a fancy name for a to-do list app. I recommend starting with a free app like Apple's Reminders app or whatever comes builtin on your devices. I've used a task manager app called Things for many years because it's beautifully designed, super fast and responsive and makes it easy to save links to emails and websites. But now let's take the example of say writing a

27:16 personal essay that doesn't have an exact time that it needs to happen in. And so I'm going to put it on the actionable side. It is still an action you'll have to take, but this one is going to go in your task manager. We've talked about the action hemisphere. Now, let's turn our attention to the other hemisphere, which is the reference side. Once again, we have two options. The first one is a notes app. Notes apps are a place to store bits of digital content text [music] images, links. The power of a digital notes app is that it's casual. You just dash off a thought or drop in a photo or paste a link without having to worry about exactly how it's formatted. I think of my notes as a working environment like a studio or a

28:01 laboratory. When I sit down to work, the first thing I do is open up my notes app because that is where I am actually doing the work. But not everything can go in a notes app. There are a few kinds of content such as a PDF or a file that's too large or a shared document like a Google doc that should go in your general file storage instead. So for example, quote from a book. First question is, is it actionable or not? It's not actionable. And then between these two options, is it something that needs to be maintained in its current format or is it very large? Not really. So it can go in the notes app. Now, let's take another example. Let's say you're doing some research and you save

28:47 a useful PDF. The content in PDFs often can't easily be turned into other formats. Definitely goes on the reference side, but can't be turned into notes and so we'll keep it in file storage on something like Google Drive. Begin thinking about your productivity as a system. It's something apart from yourself that you can step back and design and change. When you start to feel that sense of information overload rising, instead of succumbing to it or thinking there's something wrong with you, ask yourself a question. What is going wrong in my system that is creating this feeling? In other words, it's not you system. If you're wondering these different parts of your second [music] brain, which is where a lot of

29:33 people struggle, that's why I created PAR. PAR cuts across all four of these systems, giving you a single way to organize all information regardless of where it's located. Check out our Parah series to learn more. I personally use Google Ah, okay. I'm learning. I'm learning. Just as your biological brain process processes proc processes, I recommend you start using the free Google. So there you can see the productivity tools structure that Thiago has outlined

30:20 for us helps us realize that the world of work has changed and therefore we need a structure that can help us synthesize the vast volumes of information that are being thrown at us on a regular basis into categorized pages that are accessible through these tools like notion. so that we can reference them as and when we need and we don't miss deadlines. um we are able to execute on our ideas that we have right so for the foreseeable future productivity tools are no longer just word excel powerpoint and so forth it's a system around how we

31:07 capture information how we organize that information how we distill it into essential insights that we can scan through very quickly and use and then express we can turn that knowledge into an output, a proposal, a post, a video or a client email, right? And so this is the system that we can use uh to ensure that we don't hoard information. Moving on to the parap framework that uh that the video has also taken us through. You'll see that you in notion you will be given opportunity to create projects

31:54 uh to list active goals that have a definitive finish line and that's what's the most important thing here is that you've got a a milestone that you need to achieve as far as the project is concerned and that might be you know creating a responsive element to your web page with a hamburger to ensure that the page renders you know in a very slick UI on your your your on your your phone or your iPad or any other device. Um or create a new launch menu or uh [clears throat] you know create a document that you can use for funding. The second category is around areas ongoing responsibilities and this is

32:39 where you you capture those ongoing responsibilities that are potentially sequenced. So there's a sort of an automation level to it. that you repeatedly uh embark on. There's no end date associated to it. Um such as you know this could be something like financial records or managing employees that you might have hired in your business. So you evaluating their performance over time. When I think of of areas, I think of, you know, tax season. This is something that uh you need to you need to manage on a regular basis as opposed to having an end date in mind because if you don't keep stock of all your expenses as an example or all your invoices or anything that uh that has an impact on your filing um you know then you know it becomes a

33:26 lot more painful when it comes to your submissions. Um so these are areas that I currently have and consistently are evaluating resources. These are topics that you are always going to return to. So in your business you might have you know marketing, you might have sales, you might have your technology or you might have data governance and things of that nature. These are areas that you are always going to come back to. And now you've got a dedicated page associated to digital marketing and you've got a content strategy that's going to be facilitated through your digital marketing activities um to ensure that you maintain attention the maintain the attention of your audience um as opposed to you know sporadically maintaining their attention.

34:13 And then lastly we've got archives. So these are not ideas that go into your archives to die, but these are activities that are completed or inactive. So you are going to get to them, but they are inactive or you've completed them. All right? You just move them out of view. So it's not something that's immediately occupying your attention, but you know you're going to have to come back to it and you're not losing the idea. you're not forgetting about the idea because you know that you've already shelved it in your archives and it's just an inactive state. Right? So this gives you a concrete example of each category. For projects you might be building a website. It's a you attaching a project

34:59 milestone to it. for your areas as mentioned. I spoke about tax uh and how you manage your financial records or you manage your compliance from a poppy perspective around how you manage employees and customer data. Um those are some things that are just ongoing. Um from a resources point of view, it's you know tips around how you can leverage the algorithm in LinkedIn to support your customer engagement or using Claude or Gemini or Chad GPT aentically to ensure that you can deliver upon your marketing activities. And then from archives as mentioned these are not ideas that are you are never going to get to these are ideas that you're just moving slightly out of window to ensure that uh your focus when

35:46 it's time to bring them into your window that you give your entire focus to them as opposed to 50% or 20%. So, it's important that you keep this system simple, right? Um, if you can't remember which folder something lives in, you have too many folders and you're ultimately not going to get to it through you're not going to get to everything that you need to get to. So, when in doubt, put it in your archives, not in a new category. Don't create a new category. Stick to projects, areas, resources, and archives. And if you're not going to get to it, put it in your archives. Okay so

36:32 how do we set up notion? As you can see on the right hand side of the screen, we've got uh just a starter kit for startups. Um notion comes with this out of the box. It's a template that you can use. So you are not starting from ground zero. you're starting at a point where you are empowered with a structure and all you're doing is you're adding your business context into that structure [snorts] which I think is phenomenal. So it's already got pre-existing built pages for the par framework for those are the top level pages and you can add in subpages associated to the projects that you are currently building and the milestones that you need to achieve. Um you can create your own database for customer relationship or to not customer relationship but to check your customer interactions or the clients uh and

37:20 suppliers that you're currently engaged with and occupy your time with um if you selling product you can use uh the database in notion in order to track your inventory movement create a content calendar um that is both searchable and structured and what's phenomenal about this here is as mentioned I've already spoken about the pre-existing templates that they have but notion has what's called notion AI where you can use natural language in order to create content um to summarize notes draft emails from bullet points or from your notes that you've already captured draft proposals from those notes as well and then generate content um as a result of the content and the the the notes that

38:06 you've created in resources or in your actions. All right. What's great about notion lastly is that you are able to also use what's called the web clipper in order to save articles and web pages directly into your second brain with one click. So you can integrate uh sorry not integrate but you can add the extension into Chrome or your browser your preferred browser. You can add a notion extension that will enable the web clipper. So as soon as you save a web page or bookmark a web page or web clip that web page, you can send it directly into your par structure through the the integration. So as you can see, notion is the preferred platform. It's the one

38:52 of the most simplest and easiest platforms that you can use. Not to say that you cannot use the likes of your typical notes app in uh in your Microsoft stack. So Microsoft has notes or loops. Um, you could use that. You could use Apple Notes if you use an Apple device. Um, what's great about Notion is that it comes with a startup package built out of the box that's free and you don't have to pay for that. Um, and it's very flexible with a uh for any level of sophistication. How do we move from ideiation and generating ideas, clustering and structuring those ideas into referenced uh into a referenceable format?

39:37 Uh we leverage task management software, right? And one of those applications are Trello for task management and for project management because we are not paid to generate ideas. We are paid to execute upon those ideas. Right? That's where revenue generation lies. That's where monetization of those ideas lies lie. So Trello is a very simple visual card-based project management application where you're moving cards from a state of not started to in progress to completed and archived. And you can do that by row. You can do that by project and by milestone which aligns very nicely with the likes of notion.

40:23 What's important is that you start with notion and you move from notion to execution of that idea into Trello as opposed to the other way around. Um [clears throat] secondly, we've spoken a little bit about notebook LM. Notebook LM is a productivity application that you can use in order to conduct research around deliberate documents, deliberate websites, deliberate videos that you want to use in order to inform how you make decisions for your business. All right? And it's free from Google. So it's within the Google ecosystem. Um, and if the Google workspace is your ideal or your preferred application or

41:09 preferred ecosystem for building your business, um, it's, you know, built directly into, you know, Gemini's got a direct integration into that there and it's got an integration into your entire G Suite. So, emails become context, uh, documents become context, sheets becomes context, um, and even slides become context, right? So everything is integrated with into that ecosystem. Um and you can pull into your notebook knowledge management uh database very seamlessly. Um what's great about notebook alm is that it also gives you an opportunity to synthesize that information and you can engage with that content in the form of a podcast. Uh so once you've inserted all these

41:56 knowledge items as sources, you can then engage with those source material as as if it was content for a podcast that you know two individuals are conversing and you can interject into that podcast by raising your hand and ask the question asking the question either through voice or through you know you know text and uh they would interact with you. Um, keep in mind that's AI. Uh, so you'll naturally pick up that those two other voices in the room are AI generated. Uh, but that gives you a much more dynamic way of interacting with your sources to ensure that you stress test it, to ensure that you apply that critical thinking lens onto the AI generated output, to ensure that you

42:42 apply the judgment lens, to ensure that you know uh that you are the judge and jury, right? Um you could also use notebook to create a mind map of all the different uh sources um once it's now synthesized um or create an infographic or create a report or a new database uh using notebook. It's phenomenal technology, very powerful. Um, and it really helps you research and synthesize a vast volume of data sets into a small knowledge base that you can use to index for the effectiveness of your business. Right? The one thing that I want you to take away from this slide uh and from this segment is you start with notion to

43:30 create a structure. If I go back one slide to create a structure of pages and subpages, databases for any data relating to your customer and your business related information. Leverage the free templates. Use notion AI in order to engage with your notes and your ideas in a natural language way. save information from your from the web or from any online uh resource directly into your notion database and your structure based on the page and subpages across the par framework. And once you've identified what projects you need to execute upon, bring those projects into Trello and start executing

44:16 against that in a very seamless and structured manner. Because once again, we are not paid to just generate ideas. We are paid to convert those ideas and execute against them. And if there's any information that you need to synthesize, use notebook alen to research that information, string it together in the form of a synthesis that you now are able to engage with using a AI generated podcast or audio overview, a mind map of the range of course content or material and um also create visual entities and visual documents that you can use in the form of uh in a visual format like as if it was an infographic,

45:02 right? And by using those three applications, you can see that we in a very structured manner move from being reactive to being very intentional about how we build our business, right? how we structure the vast amount of thoughts that go on in our minds when we see content, when we see one of our competitors potentially produce a video or produce a piece of work or a new a new feature or a new product that we think that I had very closely to what I wanted to do. Um before this you implemented the structure before we implement the structure information was just everywhere right um but we couldn't find

45:50 it because we kept it in our you know between our ears um and as a result of keeping it between our ears uh in our brains and trying to think that we could store it there and memorize that information uh we lose ideas right documents become unfindable especially under pressure. Um with this constant flow of information that's coming towards us, we have a very low level of information retention and a high level of overwhelm when we are trying to produce something that we know we have the ability to do but we just aren't getting to it. Right? But once we once we've implemented the

46:36 structure once we've implemented a system of codifying what information goes where organizing that information into structured files and formats. Distill that information into a consumable manner and then express that into a type of a product that we want to implement or a marketing plan that we want to leverage or a sales strategy that we want to implement as well. and brought that into a series of projects actions resources and archives. Uh we're able to then pull together that information from everywhere across the ether of our lives that's flowing through our mind. So now under pressure, we are able to quickly

47:24 reference where this information comes from and where it needs to go to. Everything important in our lives is then trusted and it's retrievable. And I think that's the most important thing here. After you've put the structure in place, all that information that you now need is retrievable. Decision decisions get made faster and the creative output that you want to bring into your business increases. All right? and you'll start to see that you'll be able to ramp up on your productivity uh by using the tools and applications that you have in mind. All right. So, this threshold is not just for when you download any application uh or notion in this particular manner. It's when you find

48:09 or when you first find something that you captured a few weeks ago um exactly when you need it. So this is the emotional payoff of the subm module. Uh that you need information just why when you require it, right? Um your second brain becomes this environment where you work. It's where you start to actually get your hands dirty around what you want to build, how you're going to build it, and when you're going to execute against that. That work takes place in notion or in your second brain. all these documents, agreements, and maybe it's a legal document that's all birthed out of uh out of your second brain, your

48:56 presentations, your pitches, your investor guides or your investor decks for funding or anything of that nature that gets put together by your AI model. Um that gets built by your your your large language model of choice. Um and through using that agent you are then able to tweak and improve or twist um that information with that document like I mentioned that presentation with that pitch deck or that data source to ensure that you can execute against the project. So as we wrap up for this subm module around your second brain, I'd like you to embellish me in these four key takeaways that your second brain

49:41 solves a retrieval problem, not a knowledge problem. There's a system that we need to leverage in order to build your second brain. It's around capturing what resonates with you, organizing that information that resonates into actionable items, distilling the insights from that information or from what you've organized, and expressing that as your output and what you'd like to use what you've just distilled for. The PAR framework gives every piece of information a place to live, right? It's either going to live in a project, either going to live in an area, either

50:27 going to live as a resource, or it's going to live as an archive. And notion as your second brain is a quick and easy application that's free to use along with Trello. um notion as your second brain where all this information is now stored integrated into Trello to move those information to move your projects from just ideas into milestones and actionable items that you need to deliver on and notebook exists then as a document repository to to research and synthesize all the information that you've captured in notion or anywhere along your ecosystem uh into a living repository that you can

51:12 interact with in multiple different formats. Whether it's through anal analytically reading through the information in a very synthesized manner or through an if you're an auditory individual through you know a a a three-way podcast yourself as the human being the human in the loop and your two audio uh podcast hosts um and you interjecting whenever you have a question that you're uncertain of a mind map to structure your thinking on a particular piece of research or as a visual infographic that now structures all of that information. So as we close off on module subm module 3 and move on to the final subm module in this uh unit, I want you to reflect

51:59 on these three questions. Where does most of your ideas and for your business that are important for your business that have data related to your business? Where does it live? Is it somewhere in your downloads folder on your your PC or is it somewhere in a document folder or where is it? And is it accessible under pressure? How much time do you take to find that important piece of information or that idea? How much time does it take you to actually find that? Which of the four parap framework categories feel most chaotic in your business right now? Is it the projects?

52:44 Is it you know what you need to action? Is it the resources? Where where does the information live? Uh where is it stored? Or is it the archives? what have you completed or what's inactive that you just can't get to and you're losing where it where it resides. And then lastly, what's the one piece of knowledge you want most to capture and never lose again? And then start to think about where you could put that right within the code system and the par framework. And I'm going to pause. Okay. So, hit pause in the video and uh we'll come back to you in a few minutes.

53:33 Welcome back and we are going to dive into a very important um discussion topic, very important subm module around how do we leverage the data that we collect and compute on a regular basis with safety in mind and in a responsible manner. And at the same time while doing that we're going to understand exactly the vastness of our digital footprint right that we create with every single click every single impression every single view it all expands our digital footprint and I'm going to take you through exactly how uh we can understand the vastness of that what's important here is that data is not

54:19 something uh when I and when I say data I'm referencing you know every single click every single data point that uh that that results as an interaction or someone seeing your post or someone interacting with your business or someone you know uh completing a form on your website. Um that data is something that you already generate and that you can generate very easily. It's not some abstract corporate context or corporate abstract uh sort of technical jargon or concept that that some organizations use. Um what's important for us to understand here is that we are creating artifacts for our business and while

55:05 creating those artifacts we are creating data that we are obligated to protect and um that's what's important for you as you build your digital presence that you are required to protect the information that you collect and store that for a particular period of time to ensure that you don't suffer a fine or potential imprisonment. as a result of violating the papaya legislation. Right? So, we've got five learning objectives for this module. We're going to explain what data is, how it's created, and why it matters for business decisions. Describe how algorithms affect our business visibility and customer reach, which is quite a fascinating one. We're

55:51 going to identify the legal obligations under under papaya. Uh we're going to distinguish a passive digital footprint from an intentional one. And then lastly, we're going to apply three practical digital safety practices in our business. We're going to see how that unfolds over the course of uh over the course of the program at length. Right? So for every payment, for every WhatsApp reply, for every click, for every view of a a video that you post on Instagram or Tik Tok or Facebook or LinkedIn, that's data,

56:37 right? And there's an opportunity that you have as an entrepreneur, as a soloreneur, if you're the only one in your business, to leverage that data to help you make decisions, to see what's working, who your customers are, and when demand peaks, what do you do? And while you're doing that, this obligation that you have that as you collect information about your customers, especially if it's sensitive information and personal information like name, surname, email address, contact number, ID number, there's an obligation that when you collect that information, you have to protect it and you have to store it in an environment that's secure with certain security parameters uh

57:23 surrounding that, right? So how do we record information across a business? Right? Data literacy as we discussed earlier in in the the the in this module doesn't require that we are a data scientist. It requires that we think about our data differently. Right? It requires that we ask better questions of the information that we already generate, not manipulate the information, not put together a presentation with a few charts and bar graphs and things of that nature. That's not that's the technical aspects of data literacy. But what's important is what you discussed over the course of of these subm modules is how

58:08 do we think critically about the information? And when thinking critically about the information, we ask better questions. And when we ask better questions, when once we get that output, we're able to judge it with the context of our environment, the context of our business, and the context within which we operate in. So what are these types of uh different data sources and different data types? Customer names, contact numbers, email address, delivery addresses, transaction records, what was purchased, when was it purchased, how much of the item was purchased, and to whom was it sent to or to whom was it purchased from?

58:54 Then we've got engagement data, right? I've already spoken about clicks, views, opens, reposts, re-shares, and they all hold a particular weight in the algorithm and we'll get to that. It's very exciting, which I I can't wait to actually get to. Um, but they all all of those engagement data elements carry a particular weight when uh you want the algorithm to work for you. The fourth pillar of trying to identify what business your information could compute is behavioral data, right? So purchasing timing. So when do people purchase? What type of path do people go on when making the purchase? What's the abandoned basket rate? So how many times

59:39 do people add items to their cart but not, you know, complete the transaction? How many people remove items from their cart and so forth? Um what's the timing associated to searching adding to the cart and buying or searching finding a replacement item and then purchasing? You know, that's the behavioral data that we uh that you you must be interested in in traversing through. And then there's operational data, right, around your current stock levels, supplier lead times and delivery rates and so forth. So what I need you to ask yourself is what does this data tell me? What does it tell you about your posts? What does it tell you about

1:00:25 your customers? Can you use WhatsApp for business or social or any of the social apps to communicate with your customers? And you know when do they act when do they actively engage in those platforms? Um are they actively engaged you know the majority of your customers between 7 and 8:00 a.m. in the morning or 8 and 9:00 in the morning 12 and 1:00 during potentially lunchtime or in the evening as they're settling down for their day. um you know those anal these platforms like WhatsApp for business and all these social media apps offer a basic foundational level of analytics for free that you can use to inform your posting schedule and when you want to raise your

1:01:11 business visibility. Right? Which ultimately brings us to to this slide over here. this next segment that every single social media application leverages an algorithm to show and surface content that is experiencing a high rate of engagement. So the social media al algorithms determine which customers see your content and if your content is not experiencing high engagement it will feature lower down on the ranking of that content in anyone's feed especially the feed that of the individuals that you're targeting

1:02:00 the search algorithms. So what we've just discussed is the social media algorithm right so that covers YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok um at the at the bare minimum. Search algorithms uh these are active in the likes of uh Google as an example. Um but these search algorithms determine whether you appear when your customers search for you and local search engine optim optimization matters directly. What does that mean? So if you don't have a Google business profile, the probability that your content will not surface when people search for you is significantly higher.

1:02:46 So during the course of this subm module, we're going to create a a Google your business profile. I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. Um there are very simple steps involved in creating that profile. Um but by setting up your Google business profile, you will then bolster your chances of being surfaced in these search algorithms um when you're not paying for ads. Right? Then there's what's called the recommendation system. So Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube all shape the trends that need to surface. Um they ultimately uh shape the trends and the products that customers are currently searching for. If your customer is not searching for your product, there's a high probability that

1:03:34 you are not going to be surfaced by the recommendation engines that these social media platforms in particular those three that they have uh running the engagement layer on on the application. And then lastly, we've got um AIdriven advertising. So what this means is that poorly targeted ads waste money. So you need to ensure that you use the right keywords to target the right audience that you want to to that you want to target so that you don't waste money by surfacing content to someone that's not a decision maker. Um if you have an educational product as an example. So, if you're building a tutor business for for uh

1:04:19 firsttime employees in a large corporates, um you want to be targeting those individuals as opposed to targeting someone that is a seasoned professional that's got 15 to 20 years in their belt in corporates. Um you don't want to be targeting that individual, right? So, you want to target the person that's just left university or the third year university student. Maybe this individual is an actuary that has now got an internship at the likes of FNB um working in the actuarial department building behavioral modeling uh activities. Um you want to target that individual so that you can help them orient themselves into an organization

1:05:04 to land much better. Um, and that means that a wellargeted uh strategy, a welltargeted advertising campaign that's bolstered with artificial intelligence reaches the right buyers as opposed to reaches someone that's not interested in purchasing your product. Right? So this is how algorithms shape our lives and what we need to ensure that we do is we need to be aware of social media algorithms, search algorithms, recommendation engines and AIdriven advertising. Uh

1:05:50 uh and let me let me do that one over. >> Sure, no problem. >> Two. >> So we need to be aware around how social media algorithms, search engine algorithms, recommendation engines and AIdriven marketing activities shape our lives from an algorithmic perspective. And we need to apply governance around what we are influenced by because if not we will become subject to how these platforms determine that our content is showcased, how we collect

1:06:35 information and how we use that information in order to make decisions. So what's important is that when platforms train you as opposed to you training the platform um it performs better for you as opposed to you are subject as mentioned you are subject to just the the ways in which the the the social media platforms like Tik Tok for example how they formulate their recommendations and if you aren't aware of that you'll fall prey to the lack of you will spend a lot of money building content or spend a lot of time creating material for the likes of Tik Tok but because you're not following the trend that is being created by the recommendation engine it's it

1:07:22 drecommends your content and it recommends someone else right so we must be aware of our behavior and anticipate that the system will provide feedback for us without being explicitly told to do Um what you need to do when analyzing the analytics from those platforms is notice which images get more likes and which specific images. So are they images that are very datari in the form of an infographic or are they images that are AI generated or are they images that are more authentically captured um which gets more likes in the context of your business so that you only start

1:08:08 posting that type of information and you start building a brand about your business um as opposed to not building something that doesn't fully represent your brand, Right? And in that way, if you remember Justin Welsh's uh structure around how he gets discovered, there's an element, the last step on his four-step process around getting discovered, building trust, deepening relationship, and then monetizing authentically. It's that authentic monetization that he's able to extract because he's built trust in an authentic manner in the way in which he's he was discovered as opposed to in a very robotic manner using artificial intelligence in order to create images that you can see with a

1:08:53 naked eye that they are just you know robotically or or artificially created. Okay. [snorts] So people with higher digital literacy show significantly lower algorithmic subjection, right? And that's a a fascinating stat. And this is that's not something that's locally to South Africa. That's part and parcel of the 47% of entrepreneurs globally that leverage digital tools effectively. Right? They know how to leverage the tools and therefore are not subject to the algorithmic nature of recommendations or suppressions of of uh their business material.

1:09:41 The second aspect of being safe, leveraging data and exploiting your digital footprint is around protecting customer information. And this is where the protection of personal information act comes in. It came into effect into full effect in 2021. Um and it regulates how we collect, store, use and share information, personal information with third parties. Um all for our business benefit, right? And this applies to you in a number of ways. And I want to read this almost verbatim on the slide so that really just sinks in and that we fully understand exactly

1:10:28 how we protect ourselves because if we don't leverage the protection of the papaya legislation, the fine that we could face is up to 10 million or up to 10 years of imprisonment as well for misusing personal information. So the first one is maintaining a customer contact list on our phone or in a spreadsheet. So often times we find that we are storing information and using that information in loosely held spreadsheets, no security around it on our phone. Our phone could be lost, could be stolen, um could be misplaced, someone else could get hold of it. if we don't have the right you know

1:11:14 multiffactor authentication on our devices someone could get access to the information on our device um so we need to maintain a secure contact list right the second way in which the papaya legislation applies to us is by running a WhatsApp business account with save customer conversations we need to ensure that we protect those conversations and you know in the in the the context of how WhatsApp is structured Today we are able to you allow for disappearing messages and that's one way in which you protect yourself and you protect your customer um against any conversations that contain personal information in them and how we use those conversations to recommend products. uh and if we are

1:12:02 upfront and say that every single conversation that we have with you, we mine that data in order to recommend more products and content to you that you might not know that we have. Thirdly, it's collecting names and email addresses via an order form through your website or through a Google form on your Google business profile. What's important about collecting that data? Because we can collect that type of information, what's important about collecting that information is that we have a caveat to it to say how that data can be used. And I've got an example on the next slide that I'll show you exactly how that caveat needs to be structured.

1:12:47 The fourth way in which this applies to you is running paid social advertising campaigns, targeting people. And if you're targeting someone, it means by definition you have information on that person um based on their data, their demographics, their age group and so forth. Then lastly, storing customer payment details or copies of identity documents, it has to be stored and captured for a particular purpose. And uh if we are storing that information without disclosing for that purpose or being transparent on that purpose and we can't answer questions when we are asked why are you storing this information that puts us in hot water and therefore that's why that last line item there applies for you. But what does this mean in practice? How do

1:13:34 we how do how do we leverage the papaya principles for us to protect ourselves and protect our businesses and protect our customers? The first is accountability, right? You're responsible for protecting information even if a supplier holds it for you. So it might not be stored on your local laptop. It might not be stored on your spreadsheet or your your phone. It might be stored in a cloud environment like Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services. It might be stored on either one of those uh cloud environments. you are still responsible

1:14:20 for protecting that information even though those organizations or those entities provide the security around it and they do so because they are G GDPR compliant. Um, so what's important here is that we state the accountability that you are still you as the business owner are still held accountable for the protection of personal information. How do you process information that you now store that you collect? So you've collected information on a on your website through a form or Google forms um and you're processing that information for a particular point in purpose right you need to clearly state

1:15:08 how that information will be used and that is what process limitation processing limitation means it's you can only collect information that you actually need for a particular purpose and that purpose is clear. The next one is around purpose specification. So being clear of why you're collecting information and you are only using it for that particular purpose. Information quality that will tell you tell the your customers or your your your providers or your your clients how long you are keeping their records for. uh how you intend on keeping those records clean and current

1:15:55 and how you intend on removing any data of people of of customers and clients from your ecosystem um and at which frequency. Right? So you're informing them around how you are maintaining the quality of that information in order to maintain a recommendation engine for your sales opportunities. Openness is the next one and that tells customers exactly what you hold about them, why you hold about them and and how you intend on removing that information that you hold about them if they ask you to, right? Um because if you don't maintain a a level of transparency and openness, there's a

1:16:42 possibility that you could lose 30% of your contact list. The upside of losing 30% of your contact list is that you maintain 70% of your actively engaged consumers because they've you've now disclosed this is why I hold this information about you. this is how I store that data and why I store it. Um, and if you're comfortable with that, I will continue to engage with you. And those that feel comfortable, in particular, if you maintain 70% of that contact list, you know that you've got an active, captured, and engaged audience that you can communicate with on a regular basis. That's a big positive. The last one is around safety safeguards. Protect information using

1:17:30 multiffactor authentication, strong passwords, um, and controlled access. You only give people access to information that they need as opposed to giving access to people to information across your entire storage. And that's important. And you can control that. And all these environments the likes of Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or AWS, they all provide role based access to information in your ecosystem by virtue of you providing those type of uh confinements or constraints around certain data sets that uh third party applications and third party providers may able to may access.

1:18:17 Then lastly, we've got data subject participation. Your customers can ask you, and I think I've highlighted this in the transparency, openness principle. It's that your customers can ask for what information you hold about them and you have to submit that. If you do not submit that information, they can follow corrective actions by going to um by directly enforcing the papaya legislation on your business. Um or they could ask you to delete whatever information you have about them because you legally have not told them exactly why you're holding on to that information. All right. So there are two ways in which you can go about implementing the protection of your

1:19:03 customers or clients information. One is a very passive manner and the other is through an intentional approach. We could build platforms by leveraging algorithms based on activity. we could be subject to those algorithms uh and as a result of that create a content strategy from a marketing perspective that's fragmented. We could approach our customers outside of their sales cycle because we don't understand exactly when they go to market to buy um because we're not leveraging the data that they've already been using. Sorry, we don't leverage the data that they've created by virtue of engaging with your

1:19:49 platform or engaging on your social media profile. Um, so we in a very fragmented manner sell or on sale. Uh, and in doing so we are so inconsistent and controlled by the platform and not you. Therefore we are subject to the algorithmic nature of these algorith organizations and these platforms. The other option for us is not being passive but being very intentional. Right? So we complete a business a profile on Google. Set it up. Create a name, assign an email address, what you sell, upload photos, um, and set your open hours. So you assigning that I'm available for business at these specific hours. um

1:20:37 uploading your logo, creating a description, not just only in the Google business profile, but across, you know, WhatsApp, uh across Facebook, across Tik Tok and Instagram or LinkedIn. Maintaining consistency across each of those applications is what's important. So the customers can recognize that regardless of where I find you, I'm finding the same message. I'm finding the same product. I'm finding the same catalog. I'm finding the same checkout process. And it lands me on the same website as opposed to three or different three or four different environments. Um because in that way you're also able to consistently post regular and purposeful content right across each of these applications across each of those uh social media environments. Um by

1:21:24 doing so on a regular basis and publishing content on a regular basis shows your customers and your clients that you are actively involved in building uh the the industry. shows them that you are actively trading and uh you're not stale in any event. Um it also prompts them to proactively engage in your profile to review their engagement with your business. Um and provide ratings across your profile to say that yes, I've had a great experience and those likes, those re-shares hold significant value. And why is that? That's because it creates trust. Reviews are probably one of the biggest

1:22:10 algorithmic indicators that you might have across every single uh every single social media platform. And that's because it builds trust and helps you to strengthen and deepen that relationship to foster monetization at a much more aggressive rate. And then lastly, build a website or a landing page of your own. you could use uh today it's it's it's shockingly simple around how you can build a website. The most complex matter is actually hosting your website but you've got applications and providers like host and many others that uh can host your your website for as little as 80 rand per day. Sorry, 80

1:22:56 rand per month not day. Um, and then you have website builders that are low low to no code that you could actually use the code from a large language model and copy and paste that into the website, review it into the website builder, review the the experience of that and um, you know, publish it from there. And that will go through from a very complex web page all the way through to or rather from a simple landing page all the way through to a complex web page that you build. So as we close off the subm module around safety data and your digital footprint, we've come to understand that every single transaction, every single click

1:23:42 and message about your business generates data. And it generates the data that's asks that asks you the question, what does this tell about me? What does this tell about my business? What does this tell about the products that I sell? How does this influence supply and demand of my products? And what does it tell me about my customer? Right? That's very important to to to understand about the subm module. We've also come to understand that we are exposed to algorithms whether we like it or not. It's understanding how these algorithms work to shape our visibility in front of our customers, in front of those targeted

1:24:28 individuals that we want to sell to. Um, and the higher in digital literacy that you have, the less algorithmic subjectivity you'll be exposed to because this the algorithms won't work against you. You will use the algorithms to work for you. We then discussed the Papay legislation and how it applies to you in terms of you collecting your custom information as an entrepreneur. Um, and where does that accountability sit? Right. It starts with you understanding the legislation and the principles that govern the protection of personal information for all the way from accountability through to customers requesting that information of what you have about them and how you manage and

1:25:14 handle that through to transparency around what you're using it for and the purpose upon which it's it's being collected and how you mine and how you process that information. um we now understand exactly what that means for us in practice. And then lastly, we've built an intentional digital footprint around how we can create our business profile on Google, how we consistently navigate those business profiles across each of those applications that we sell on um and how [clears throat] we could potentially build a website and where the importance of those different entities in navigating from being a passive entrepreneur to an int intentional entrepreneur and using the

1:26:01 applications that are available to us for free in most cases and converting that into something of meaning and purpose for our customers. So as we close off on this module, I want you to take 10 to 15 minutes to pause and reflect on these four questions. What customer data does your business currently collect? Where is that information stored? and who has access to it, what customer data are you thinking about collecting and why? And that's an important point of reflection because it helps you understand the specific purpose for which you're collecting information. And it also tells you exactly how you're able to mine that

1:26:48 data or process that data because you are only if you've identified what you're processing that information for, you cannot process it for anything else as well. Right? The third point of reflection is if a customer had asked you what information do you hold about me right now? Could you answer that question confidently? And if you don't collect information about your customers at the moment because you're in the very early or emerging stages of building your business, what's important then is to start asking that question. What type of information should I want to collect about my customer and how should I hold on to that information in order to inform the products that I build, the

1:27:34 products I sell and the products that I unsell from there. And then lastly, I want you to think about is your digital footprint something that you build intentionally or have built intentionally or something that has just happened to you. I want you to pause the video and reflect upon those four questions and then we'll come back in a few

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