Crafting Authenticity in Business with AI: Insights from Mona Bavar

Freddy D: 00:00:55

Our guest today is Mona Bavar, a cultural innovator blending ancient wisdom with cutting edge AI to transform how businesses tell their stories and shape the future. Born in Iran and raised in America, Mona's multicultural journey sparked a deep passion for bridging worlds and fostering meaningful connections.

With her company, BlueApples AI, she helps entrepreneurs harness the power of AI to fuel innovation and creativity while staying true to their authentic voice, ensuring they thrive in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Through D L I S H, she curates luxury gifting and multisensory experiences that connect people across cultures, redefining the art of meaningful exchange.

By integrating archetypes, storytelling and technology, Mona is at the forefront of helping leaders navigate a future where human connection remains at the heart of of innovation.

She's an inspiring guest with a wealth of knowledge to share and her unstoppable journey exemplifies how effective leadership shapes organizational culture, transcending the customer journey to positively impact all stakeholders. Please join me in welcoming Mona Bavar, founder of BlueApples AI.

Freddy D: 00:02:15

Welcome Mona Bavar. From Blue Apple's AI to the business Superfans podcast, How are you this afternoon? Good afternoon, Mona.

Mona Bavar: 00:02:23

I'm doing very well, Frederick, how are you?

Freddy D: 00:02:26

I'm excited to have you on the show. AI has taken over the world. We just heard stuff that China just came out with what is a deep seek platform. It's kind of throwing everybody off.

So let's go back to your backstory of how you came up with Blue Apple's AI.

Mona Bavar: 00:02:48

Thank you very much Freddy for having me on your show. I'm really very much looking forward to sharing with your audience.

Stepping back a little bit, I have another company called Delish Us, which is a gifting company that I started about almost 10 years ago.

AI was born out of necessity because as entrepreneurs when we have startups, one of the most important thing is bootstrapping, so we have to cut costs where we can.

And about two years ago I started to play around with ChatGPT like most people were and I realized that it can be a very useful partner in my business as far as content creation went and ideation strategy, a lot of different categories that I was using it.

So essentially it was born out of this necessity to be able to create more time for myself as a founder as well as even if I want to delegate something, have a clear understanding of what it is that I want to delegate.

And with time and with the development of AI and the progression, me and a couple of other fellow entrepreneurs decided to offer our services to Solopreneurs small businesses, mid sized businesses, even corporations, to understand how effectively to implement AI into their systems and to use it in the most effective way while maintaining their human authenticity and their brand voice. Because that is one of the most hazardous pitfalls that is presented today with AI, with all the content that's being created.

If it doesn't maintain our brand voice, then we're not going to stand out from all the competitors.

I was just telling one of the founders today, we keep receiving all these emails or we see all these LinkedIn posts by really successful entrepreneurs and always it starts with, I'm thrilled too.

And as soon as I see that thrilled word, I know they have put it into an LLM and it has produced this email or this body of copy that they're sending to me or they're posting on their social medias. So that's where we start to see that you need the human touch, right?

Freddy D: 00:05:05

It becomes artificial and for lack of a better way of wording it, but an accurate way, because it's called AI, artificial intelligence. But now you're becoming yourself, you're becoming artificial because you're not being authentic anymore. I've used AI for several years as well.

The way I've used it was to take what I wrote and really improve it and improve the messaging and improve it to target audience. So I've used it as a tool to make my message that I wrote be a better message, more focused message.

And that's helped me in the engagement of dealing with prospective customers and existing customers because my messaging was much better targeted. But leveraging the AI tool, absolutely, that.

Mona Bavar: 00:05:56

Is the most important thing.

know, especially this year in: 2025

Fortunately or unfortunately, I'm going to leave that to your audience to determine. But you need someone that is going to guide you.

And that's why most of us have coaches when it comes to developing a brand where we say, okay, what is our brand story? First and foremost, what is it that we want our audience to know? Who is our target audience?

How are we going to connect on an emotional level that will help our brand stand out from the competitor? Right. I mean, that's basic 101.

And so if you don't already do that work prior, it's going to be very difficult for you to effectively and by effectively I mean that authenticity stand out with AI.

Freddy D: 00:07:07

Yeah, because you can actually leverage AI to help create identifying your ideal avatar for your business, whether it's a service based business or a product based business or a combination of both. And you may have very different avatars that you are targeting based upon the product and services that you're offering.

So you're absolutely right on the money is that you need to take the human aspect, leverage the AI tool to help refine the avatar because it can do the research and get the data that you need to do. But then you still really should put it together. And so that your messaging is main maintains its authenticity.

The other thing that you brought up well was the fact that we need coaches.

If you look at a sports team, okay, look at the sports analogy, you look at a football team, they've got strength training coach, they've got a coach for the defense, they got an offense coach, they got a quarterback coach, they got a punting coach, they got a receiving team coach. Same thing in baseball, you got a batting coach, you've got the pitcher coach, you've got a shortstop coach, etc.

You can't really excel and play at that higher level unless you end up having somebody to at least brainstorm with or worst case just somebody to vent with and get stuff off your chest. What you're providing as a coach is helping people go to play at the next level.

Mona Bavar: 00:08:38

Absolutely, you're right. I just want to clear one thing up. I'm not, I wish I was a coach.

I don't believe to be a coach in the sense that we're more partners as consultants will come in and we'll speak with you and understand what your needs are. We are empathetic like a coach is. And we are, let's say, on the same road, all of us together going the same journey of success.

But I think is the part that is different from every other coach or consultancy out there or agency out there is the fact that we understand that the creativity that is needed for every successful brand out there or designer or artist, anything that you want to say?

Creativity is what we call the human being and it's how you learn how to partner with AI so that you are the leader, you are the decision maker, not the AI. So you're training your AI so that it is exactly an extension of you. So that's the part that I think is, is important.

Freddy D: 00:09:46

Yeah. Okay, Little tweak there but fair enough.

And that's important what you bring up, because I use AI and I keep training it myself because of the messaging to resonate with whoever the reader is or whoever I'm sending it to. And there's times where I've looked at it and says, no, this is not even close to what it really I want it to be. And so I've got to go back.

And then I realized I'm the one that didn't provide the proper information and therefore I got what I asked for, not what I thought I wanted.

Mona Bavar: 00:10:20

Exactly, exactly. And that's what ends up happening.

But a lot of people today, because entrepreneurship has become this trend, let's say everybody wants to be an entrepreneur or thinks themselves an entrepreneur. And that's wonderful because I think it also helps us as human beings to work on our internals inside ourselves.

Because entrepreneurship isn't as much internal journey as it is an external journey of success. So it's a self discovery, let's say.

I think that the beauty of it comes when you are tapping into that and saying, you know what, yes, I'm an entrepreneur, yes, I want to go this route, but I can easily put it in and get all the information out and send these generic emails, mass emails to my leads and hope that someone bites. But if there's no, let's say you're networking or if you're not engaging on that human side, it's not necessarily going to happen the way you hope.

Because the antithesis of AI is human connection.

And many people, many experts in this world of AI that have been around much more than now that we're exposed to it, this is what they highlight, that we cannot lose that human connection. As you noticed, a lot of supper clubs or retreats are popping up because people are yearning for that as well. And it will only continue to grow.

So we have to be careful, we have to really be careful when it comes to our authenticity and our self awareness.

As first, as an entrepreneur, a leader, a CEO, as anything that you want to say, an executive, to know who we are before we start to execute any kind of strategy or let's say blueprint with AI.

Freddy D: 00:12:16

Agree with that 100% because you're not going to create super fans if it's not authentic. And businesses need super fans that propel that business, that are championing that business.

You look at the background screen here, we got both of our faces painted.

Think of a sports team, that's their brand advocates that are team superfans, they got their faces painted, the jerseys the banners, I mean, those are die hard sports fans. What are they doing? They're promoting that team and it's costing the team nothing. And they're most likely making merchant money off the merchandise.

So if you're not engaging, as you basically said, with authenticity to your audience, which would be employees, a solopreneur perspective and existing customers, business partners, suppliers, distributors, they're not going to be your biggest fans because it's going to be all artificial and unauthentic.

You where your competitor that is applying the tools properly, they're creating the energy, they're creating the fan base and that's transforming that business and that's growing. And the other business will be standing still.

Mona Bavar: 00:13:34

Exactly. You're absolutely, absolutely right.

You can see from which, by the way, I love your title of superfans because I think it's a wonderful way for us to exactly explain as superfans what we really mean, which is the clients or the customers or whoever responds to what it is that we're offering. Right. So I think that's a beautiful way of putting it.

Freddy D: 00:13:59

Thank you. Yeah.

Because really, if you stop and think about it, it's all stakeholders because it starts with, we talked about the CEO developing themselves into the AI so it understands them.

But if they're using that to communicate with their team, if they're using that to communicate with their customers and their suppliers and distributors and complementary businesses and banker and all that stuff, it can get really out of control. It's important to blend the two so that, okay, you can use AI for certain things, but then an old fashioned. Hey Mona, thank you very much.

I really appreciate the extra effort that you put on that project. Old school in person or sending a card through the mail. You said you had a gifting business, so sending out a genuine gift. Game changers.

Mona Bavar: 00:14:49

Exactly. Absolutely. And I find myself very, very fortunate to be on both sides, let's say.

So I'm both a fan of this as well as a fan of that, which happen to be just the same coin, but the opposite sides. So bringing these two together, I find it very, very fulfilling. And in a way I would, without sounding cliche, I call it almost my calling.

That took many years to understand why we choose to even go on this path. Yes, we all want to be successful. Yes, we all want to make money. All of that is there. But do we first have the resilience to endure this journey?

And second, do we have that self awareness to understand where this journey is going to take us and what it is that we hope to achieve. So I think it's beautiful and I think there's a lot that can be done with AI.

e put together this guide for: 2025

The archetypes are based on Carl Jung's psychology, let's say, the theory that he put forth using these timeless, ancient archetypes that have been used since the beginning of time to identify different Personas that we have within ourselves. And as leaders or executives or anyone really, it's our responsibility to understand these different aspects because we need to guide other people.

I did this experiment with myself last year and I found that with these prompts that we have worked on and refined and let's say, mastered, each month you tap into a different archetype where it allows you the space to reflect, to understand. Are you the visionary? Are you the creator? Which archetype do you fall into and which one do you want to cultivate?

Which one is it that you want to bring forth and in what scenarios of your life do you want to bring those forth? So I think if we really, really want it, we can walk this parallel line where we're both showing our business success as well as our self growth.

Freddy D: 00:17:05

Yeah, because you got to have both. One without the other. Doesn't work.

Mona Bavar: 00:17:10

No, not at all.

Freddy D: 00:17:12

So Mona, tell us how you would work with a company to help them put together a strategy.

Mona Bavar: 00:17:20

I think the first and foremost important thing is with our clients that we have is to sit down and to understand what their needs are. Because not everyone's needs are the same. And then you have to know what it is that you need to implement for them.

Because for example, maybe someone says, I want help with bookkeeping. So then you go and you research that and you bring in a AI platform that can help with that. Someone says, I want to develop ideas.

So you work with them to help them understand their ideas. Most of the people that we have been working with so far, we realize that there is a step back.

So we have to go and sit down with them again and say, okay, that's wonderful. You sell. I don't know.

You are a beauty product, a cream that is designed specifically for age spots and women that are going through menopause and their skin is extra dry. So yes, that's beautiful. But where's your. Why are you doing it? Because you see that it's a good target audience and you just want to target them.

What is your price point? Is your price point going to meet their demand? So you help them understand what their story is. By just understanding their why.

So most of the time you see that it goes back to you. So my gifting company, when I started it, for example, it was the story that we all share around a table.

It's that story that brings the food, that brings us together, where we can bridge cultures, break boundaries and create a community. And going back and understanding my story, I understood that when I moved to the United States from Iran as a forced immigrant.

It was in: 1979

There was a lot of adjustment, right, because there's this cultural difference, there's the background difference, there's physical appearance that's different. So this table created by my mother and father became a safe haven.

So this going on in my life, everywhere I went, I would always invite people to my home where we would share this journey of the table and understand about each other. But I never understood why. I created a gifting company around food, art and design.

And then fast forward two years after starting my company, I was with my business coach and she is phenomenal at this, helped me tap into that inner self and understand the why.

So I understood that it's this gift of being around a community, of feeling safe while you're enjoying this pleasure and creating this atmosphere of connection through vulnerability, through shared stories, through the cultural differences. And so that's where we help with clients and understanding that connection so that you can connect on an emotional level with your audience.

And then the AI is implemented. It's secondary. I have to say yep.

Freddy D: 00:20:28

And I can say yep because I've Now I'm at 32 countries. I used to be in charge of global sales and marketing in the SaaS world years ago.

And I had to meet people of multitude of different cultures, different beliefs, different religion types, everything else. And we always got together. Food was one of the things that everybody enjoyed and that and laughter.

Creating laughter was something that was contagious and it broke barriers.

There's times where I couldn't speak the language, but we still were able to communicate because we had the respect for one another and understanding.

So what you've done with your gifting and now you're leveraging AI is really brilliant because you're really taking two things and putting them in together and really coming out with something that's very important, sometimes overlooked. I had more success with different cultures by taking time to learn about their culture and meet them at their cultural level.

That was the biggest difference when I was in Japan. Japan is very, very important about culture. It's about respect.

Of higher people in the corporate world, the higher up that they are, the more respect you need to give them. And if you don't understand that, you're going no place fast because that's considered an insult.

You're not bowing and not recognizing that person so totally.

What you just said is very important for our listeners to really understand that they really need to incorporate that into their everyday business affairs.

Mona Bavar: 00:22:11

Exactly, exactly. Because it's what, at the end of the day, makes a difference.

We know that in sales, for example, the more you can connect with the person that you're trying to sell to on a human level and an authentic human level, the more successful you'll be, the better the response. And so, yes, there's always these principles that we learn or the theories that we learn that we are told to implement.

We go do our mba, we get degrees, and so on and so forth.

But at the end of the day, if you sit down and you really are yourself on so many different levels and that first and foremost, being okay with being vulnerable and not seeing it as something to be ashamed of, you will see how positive the response is. And that only comes through being more and more in tune with yourself.

Freddy D: 00:23:05

Yeah. People, you know, buy from people that they like and trust, period.

You can be clever, you can have all the technology, you can leverage all the AI tools that you want, but if you're not connecting on that emotional level, you're going nowhere fast.

Mona Bavar: 00:23:21

Exactly.

Freddy D: 00:23:22

I remember a long time ago, I was in Poland and we were lost. And I speak Polish, but enough to get in trouble. And I haven't spoken it in years because I don't have anybody to speak to.

I'm originally from France, so I speak French fluently. But we got somebody to help us with directions, and that person just told us to follow him through broken communications.

But we developed an honest rapport with this person, and they went out of the way. Was a taxi driver. He didn't charge us or anything.

e where we're at. And this is: 1978

Mona Bavar: 00:24:16

Yes. And those are the relationships that leave an impression on us. I believe that then can lead to so many different things.

If we really ask ourselves, where does inspiration come from?

It comes from any interaction that we have with our surroundings, Whether that's a human or an exhibition or a taste or anything that stimulates our sensories that becomes inspirational to us.

It may not happen at that moment, but you may walk away from a conversation and then reflect on it and say, wow, that really inspired me in so many ways. And so I think yes, it's very special.

Freddy D: 00:24:54

And then what you're doing is you can take that experience and then take it into the AI and amplify it and make it a much more engaging where someone is reading it or whatever and they can't put it down because it's so riveting. So you're leveraging the technology versus getting a ghostwriter or somebody else to do it.

You're leveraging the AI to take your story, put it into the thing, amplify it, tweak it, and now you've got something really special.

Mona Bavar: 00:25:26

Exactly, exactly. I'm so happy you pointed that out because currently we have a client that we're doing a market analysis in order to implement the strategies.

While we were doing the market analysis, one thing I realized is you can put it in, you can choose the LLM that you decide.

You, you say ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, whichever one you want and you put it in and say, I want to do a market analysis for such and such company and it will produce it for you. If you don't already have the knowledge to know what it is that you're looking for, there's no way it's going to be presentable for a client.

So the businesses, they're not stupid on the other side. Yes, AI is there to facilitate, it's not there to do the 100% work.

So you cannot and I highly recommend that you do not remove yourself from the equation, that human touch is still necessary.

Another client had hired us to write product descriptions for their e commerce and we started out doing it and we quoted the price and they weren't necessarily happy with it because they said, oh well, you're not writing it anyway. Why do I need to pay you this high amount?

And I sat down with them and I said, listen, you can go do the keyword research, you can ask any of them, any of the LLMs that you want, how you should write a product description to be most effective, converting whatever it is that you want to put in as adjectives, go ahead and do it.

But at the end of the day, if you don't know what you're looking for because this is the first time you're doing an e commerce shop, you are not going to be successful. Because remember, the objective is to rank in, order you for customers to come onto your platform for them to convert and then leave.

Use some kind of revenue. Right? So if this process, you don't know anything about it in order to write the copy, then I can't help you.

Because it's not just about sitting in front of the LLM. They didn't hire us.

From what I see the product descriptions, I am assuming either she or someone that has been hired for much less than we were going to charge to sit down and write product description, which is fine. That's up to you. But it's so obvious that I as a customer will say, you know what, this really doesn't resonate with me.

Freddy D: 00:27:54

You bring up a very important point there, Mona, because if you can't make that emotional connection with the buyer, it's done, over, gone, adios, bye, bye. The other aspect of it is if they do make the transaction, it's got to be a smooth transaction overall.

They have to be feeling good about making the transaction. So you've got to connect with them emotionally. So you're absolutely correct that your messaging has got to resonate. They've got to connect emotion.

People buy emotionally and they justify it. Logically, that's just sales 101 or maybe 102, you know. But the bottom line is you need to understand that.

So you've got to connect with them emotionally. The transaction is going to go smooth. I always tell people the deal isn't the deal, the deal is after the deal.

Them signing the paperwork or putting a credit card in and buying. It's what happens after they make that transaction that's more important than the transaction in itself.

A lot of businesses don't recognize that, but that's the sale because that's the onboarding process they can turn around. Says, I had a great experience. I got a thank you email or I got a thank you card or whatever it is now.

I'm a super fan of that whole experience and I'm becoming a mouthpiece for that entity.

You know, someone I'm having dinner with, we talked about building relationship and someone comes up, oh yeah, man, you need to go to this product, this site or stuff. It's a phenomenal experience.

Great product, great service, love the company versus the other approach, which would be, oh man, you don't want to deal with those people.

Mona Bavar: 00:29:42

Exactly, exactly. You're absolutely right. And I think that was a great example that you gave because if it's not there, it's not there.

And now it's even gotten more competitive because everybody is now doing the same thing. So how do you stand out? Because that's always the objective. Right.

And the only way to stand out is to have more knowledge and information about your brand, yourself, whatever it is that you were trying to sell and your ideal target audience.

Freddy D: 00:30:15

And toss in a sprinkle of personal touch.

Mona Bavar: 00:30:19

Exactly. Exactly.

Freddy D: 00:30:21

Because you lose a personal touch, it doesn't matter. It's transaction. We've become too much of a transactional society.

And those that differentiate themselves, you see those businesses that are scaling, they're bringing back the interaction and the personalization, and those guys are exploding. And the people that are all transaction based are wondering, what happened? Why is my business flatlining?

That's because you forgot the people are people still.

Mona Bavar: 00:30:53

Exactly. We cannot forget that. It's one of the pitfalls that is standing before us. So we have to be quite careful. And you know what?

At the end of the day, Freddie, we have to make an effort. It's not so easy.

If it was easy that everybody seems to think it is, and maybe that's why everybody's trying to do it now, not everybody would be doing it. Right. So that was the caveat that I put in the middle. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Just because everybody is doing it today, it doesn't mean that it's easy. It just means that it's becoming generic.

Freddy D: 00:31:31

Right? Yeah. Great conversation, Mona, as we come towards the end here. Of our show. So how can people find you?

Mona Bavar: 00:31:44

I invite them to set up if they'd like a discovery call. It's complimentary. And you can get to know us and we can get to know you and see how AI can help you. And just to get to know each other anyway.

So you can visit us at Blueapples with an S. AI and schedule a call and who knows where it would lead you.

Freddy D: 00:32:05

Okay. Well, we'll definitely put that into the show notes for our audience so that they can take you up on that.

Because you either got to be in the game or you're going to be on the sidelines. And I have a saying. There's three types of people. Type A are the ones that make things happen. Type two are the people that watch things happen.

And type three are wondering what happened.

Mona Bavar: 00:32:33

I love it and it's so true. I love that categorization.

Freddy D: 00:32:38

Yeah. There's a couple words that are tweaked, but I left them out.

Mona Bavar: 00:32:42

Right. If you don't mind, I'll steal it and tweak a little more of the words.

Freddy D: 00:32:46

Yeah, that's fine. Please do. I'll take royalties yes, I'll offer them. All right, Mona, it's been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfans podcast.

Great conversation, great insights for our listeners, and definitely look forward to having you on the show down the road.

Mona Bavar: 00:33:04

Thank you very much. Freddie, it was a pleasure meeting you and sharing with your audience. And thank you for also giving me the platform to share my story.

Freddy D: 00:33:12

You're welcome.